


Joe Cool is Alive and Well in Macabre

by glinda4thegood



Category: Lone Gunmen, The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Monster of the Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Langly, Frohike and Scully travel to Macabre, to find out what's been killing residents of a genre artists' colony. Post <i>Three of a Kind</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

(BITS FROM RADIO WAVES HEADED OUT IN THE DIRECTION OF ALPHA CENTAURI, AND THE INFINITE – ORIGINATION POINT, 1967)

 _... Long before the white man  
and long before the wheel  
When the green dark forest  
was too silent to be real.  
But time has no beginnings ..._

Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Gordon Lightfoot

 

 _It woke slowly from dream. As it slept the last victim’s natural rhythms eventually, naturally, attempted to dominate its behavior._

 _Clawed limbs propelled it out of darkness. The terrain had altered between dreams, and wind scent was tainted with trace odors of a more populated environment. There was still no taste of the game or other gamesplayers._

 _Discomfort forced it to purge strange instincts absorbed during its last change. Memory of first-form soothed it, and discomfort subsided. It took the furred carcass back into the earthen haven. Loosened rock and debris fell to block the entrance as it retreated. In the dark it nested among bones of the other who had followed it on the long journey to this place, deceived by the guise of its mate._

 _Dark lethargy returned, then dreams of playing the game_

 

 **8:30 a.m. Thursday  
Hoover Building, W.S.Skinner’s office**

“He won’t give his name. He says he knew you in Vietnam.”

“I’ll take it, Kimberly.” Skinner looked at the flashing light on his phone. Which of them could it be? He hadn’t stayed in touch with more than two or three of the men he had served with. He lifted the receiver. “This is Skinner.”

“Walter Skinner? You won’t remember me.”

The voice was a distinctive rough tenor Skinner had never heard before.

“Who is this?”

“The name’s Dashiell. I was one of the medics who carried you out of the jungle. Surprised the hell out of us to find you weren’t dead.”

“Surprised me, too.” Skinner frowned. “How’d you find me, and what can I do for you?”

“I keep a data base on everyone I served with, or got to know during that time. Mostly to satisfy my own curiosity, and keep record of a history that’s already been changed by the textbook publishers.” The man’s laughter sounded like gravel in a coffee can. “And once in a while a man needs a friend, a business or political connection, for some specialized personal matter.”

“Get to the point,” Skinner said. He didn’t want to start the silent newsreel of his days in Nam playing in his memory again.

“The FBI may get a request for assistance from the police in my area. I’d like you to send agents Mulder and Scully up our way. The problem seems to be one they might feel comfortable with. Whatcha-call-em? An X-file?”

“How is it you’re familiar with these agents and their work?” Skinner began to wonder if he should have the call traced.

“Serendipity. After I pulled you out of my database I asked my nephew to run down your location. Last I knew you were just starting with the bureau. Imagine my surprise. Not only did he know who you were, but you turn out to be a D.C. muckety-muck. He’s the one who put me onto the Spook Squad.”

“The Spook Squad. Agents Mulder and Scully.” Skinner stared down at his desk. When he was an old man, would memories of Mulder and Scully bring the same feelings of inadequate regret that sometimes overwhelmed him when he remembered his time in uniform? “And your nephew is --?”

“No matter. I’d really appreciate their help. Nasty business, two people are dead, and the cops are looking in my direction.” The man paused. “I’m not worried about myself, but one of the people killed was a good friend.”

Skinner closed his eyes, hearing the sound of hastily muffled coughing on the other end of the line. “I can’t promise anything. Where do you live?”

“Nokomis County. That’s in Michigan.” The man coughed again, then cleared his throat. “The county boys are in charge right now. Macabre has a pretty good security system, but no law enforcement personnel.”

“Macabre?” Skinner repeated. He supposed that in _The Little Cosmic Book of Ironies_ it was noted he’d get a call from a place called Macabre before he died.

“That’s us. I’ll fax a map of Macabre to your office. I’m looking forward to meeting agents Mulder and Scully.” The line went silent. The man had hung up on his end.

Skinner removed his glasses and began to massage the bones under his eyebrows with the tips of his fingers. With his eyes squeezed shut he could see faces and bodies in disjointed flashes of unsummoned memory. He had never gotten the chance to thank those soldiers who packed him out of the jungle, the men who’d realized one of the corpses wasn’t entirely lifeless.

The faces faded when he reopened his eyes and replaced his glasses. It wouldn’t hurt to find out if the bureau had heard from Nokomis County, he decided, reaching for the phone.

 

 **1:30 p.m. Thursday**

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Scully’s face looked thin, and her hair was getting long. Probably not as much a fashion statement as it was an indication of the amount of time she set aside for personal maintenance. Skinner found himself assessing her physical presence as she stopped in front of his desk. Her eyes were clear and direct, but the light makeup she usually wore could not eliminate the purple smudges beneath her lower eyelashes.

“Sit down, agent Scully. I understand Mulder’s taking some vacation time.” Painfully conscious of the fact that everything in his office was being recorded for bastard posterity, Skinner tried to keep his eyes from straying toward the bookcase with the hidden camera pointed at them.

“Yes. He’s due to be back at the end of next week,” Scully said.

She could speak and sit so quietly. Someone who had never heard her voice raised in protest, had never seen her face intent on the pursuit of an answer might think she was merely another of the bureau’s poised, professional woman agents. The facade was only skin deep, Skinner knew. Scratch a verbal match against that pale skin and fire would result.

"You’ve got time coming yourself. Do you have any plans?"

He saw her eyes narrow focus as she reevaluated him, and the contents of the desk in front of him. Skinner met her look resolutely, the pinhole peephole seeming to grow to the size of a telescope lens in his peripheral vision.

"I did have plans to spend time with my mother, but that’s been postponed. Why do you ask?"

Skinner pushed the slim folder forward. “I was going to ask you for a favor."

The words were harder to say than he had anticipated. The wariness in her face made it even more difficult to continue what he’d rehearsed as he read the papers she now took from his desk.

"I received a phone call, agent Scully. From a man I've never met. He was one of several medics who saved my life in Vietnam." Skinner didn't elaborate. He’d shared the details of his after-death experience once with Mulder, and realized he no reservations about telling Scully the same story, but the phantom whirring from the cabinet made him circumspect. "He asked for my help."

Scully skimmed the papers. "The F.B.I. hasn’t been asked to help with this case, sir. In fact, it appears local jurisdiction has decided to attribute these deaths to natural causes."

"Yes. Climbing accident. Forest fire.” He watched her replace the papers, and resume her still pose.

"You have some reason to question these findings?”

"On the basis of that information?” Skinner shook his head. “No. But the man who called knew about the X-files. He implied the deaths might qualify for this classification.”

She might have been sitting for a portrait. Her eyes were fixed on a point somewhere beyond his shoulder. Her mind could have been anywhere.

"Tell me what you want me to do.” Scully’s gaze transferred from the infinite to direct contact with his eyes.

Skinner felt the blood surge into his face, heat his chest and thighs. “Thank you. I’d like you to take a few days off, visit this place, talk to this man. See if the local authorities will let you review the autopsy results.”

He stood as she did. “I’ll pay all your expenses, Scully. This is a personal matter.”

“Of course. What’s the name of your informant? That’s not included in these papers.”

“The note on the bottom of the map in that folder is signed _Dashiell Langly_.”

“Langly.” Scully’s face colored. Her lips compressed as she repeated the name. “It couldn’t be.”

“Couldn’t be ?” Skinner asked, then remembered the comment the man had made about his nephew. “He said he asked his nephew for information about my whereabouts. I didn’t make any connection. Have you?”

“One of the Lone Gunman publishers. You’ve met them, met him.”

“Langly. The blond,” Skinner realized.

“Yes.”

The facade dissolved as Skinner watched her come alive, irritation and resignation followed directly by a curious expression of feline resolve. _Like a cat that’s located a mouse,_ Skinner thought with a lightening of his soul. She would do this for him.

“I’ll let you know what I find out, sir.”

“Is there anything I can do? Have Kimberly make plane reservations?”

“No thank you. I’ll take care of it.” Scully’s voice was still professional, but Skinner heard an underlying purr of anticipation.

“I appreciate this, Scully,” he said. “Have a safe trip.”

 

 **3 p.m. Thursday  
Lone Gunmen Headquarters**

“We were expecting you.” Langly lurched to his feet as Scully walked through the door, past Frohike. She looked focused, and scary, Langly thought nervously.

“Langly,” she said.

“Langly?” Frohike wisecracked as he bolted the door behind her. “How the cuties have fallen.”

“Shut up, Frohike.”

Her voice had a matter-of-fact quality that made the muscles in Langly’s buttocks tighten reflexively. His imagination supplied the targeting bullets that floated in the air between her eyes and his face as she zeroed in on him.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got some information for me. About your uncle. About a couple of deaths in Michigan.” Scully stopped a scant three feet in front of him, folded her arms and waited.

“Sure.” Langly looked over her head to meet Frohike’s eyes. Frohike made a gesture of encouragement, grinning at Scully’s back.

Decided to use her professional persona, Langly thought. He wondered how long that would last. Her voice and body language seemed to indicate she wasn’t holding any grudges against them, but no slack would be cut, no shit taken.

“I can tell you everything as we travel. Our plane leaves in two hours. Are you packed?” Langly asked.

“Our plane?”

The persona wavered for a moment, Langly judged from the way the skin around her eyes wrinkled and the muscles near her jaw spasmed.

“Frohike and I are going with you,” Langly found himself nervously pulling at the hem of his t-shirt. “Dash is my uncle.”

“I made the plane reservations, Scully,” Frohike interrupted, attempting an intervention. “We’ve got a few more things to do here. Why don’t we meet at the airport?”

“Byers isn’t joining us on this outing?”

Sarcasm. Langly was almost relieved by this evidence of Scully’s temper. “Not enough notice. Somebody’s got to mind the shop.”

Her head jerked in acknowledgment. “All right. Just so you know going in, Langly: I’m doing this for Skinner, not for your uncle, not for you.”

“Roger that.” Langly felt his head nodding too enthusiastically. “Thanks, Scully.”

“I’ll let you know when you’ve got something to thank me for,” Scully said. “Let me out of here, Frohike.”

Langly watched Frohike lock the door behind her. “I don’t care what you say about her. She isn’t getting any, so she gets off on quirky shit -- like intimidating friends and acquaintances when she’s uptight.”

“Maybe.” Frohike looked thoughtful, and a little wistful. “She’s had a rough time of it. If we can brighten her life by turning around and dropping our pants for a swift kick, or anything else, the least we can do is be there for her.”

“Jeez. You wish, old dude.” Langly grinned as he pictured Frohike dropping his pants, looking back over his shoulder and waggling his bare cheeks. “Did you find the duffels?”

“Yeah. There’s still clothes in them from the Vegas trip,” Frohike said.

“Then I’ll finish here, grab the laptop, and we can take off.” Langly’s fingers were already moving over his keyboard. “You charged the tickets to Skinner?”

“I did. And emptied petty cash,” Frohike patted his pocket. “When are you going to tell me about your uncle?”

Langly hit a final key. “On the plane. No sense in repeating the story twice.”


	2. Chapter 2

**5:30 p.m. Thursday**

Langly tried to arrange his leg so it didn’t keep bumping Scully, reflecting Frohike had no such concern. She was seated between them, with Frohike in the window seat. Frohike’s knee rested against Scully’s.

They were in the air, headed toward Michigan. Langly could see a flight attendant approaching with the drink cart.

“Talk to me, Langly.” Scully looked past Frohike at the clear air beyond the plane’s wing tip.

She had met them, boarded the plane with them, and quietly seated herself between them with only the briefest of polite words.

“I’ll start with Macabre.” Langly tried to push his glasses back up his nose. A combination of sweat and recycled plane air made his face greasy. “They call it a resort association, but it’s kind of an artists’ colony.”

“Artists?” Frohike flipped his tray down and began to fish around in his pockets. “You want a drink, Scully?”

“No.” She smoothed the dark fabric of her tailored trousers. “What kind of artists?”

“Mostly writers, a few graphic artists, some wanna-be animators.” As Langly spoke he saw Scully’s fingers relax, heard the soft sound of a long breath of air expelled from her lungs. Did she dislike flying as much as he did, Langly wondered.

“Keep talking,” Scully prompted.

“The place has an interesting history. It wasn’t always Macabre,” Langly said.

Frohike made a noise somewhere between a cough and a snort. “You gonna tell us why it’s Macabre now?”

“Shut up, Frohike.” Scully pushed his knee away from hers.

Langly yawned to pop his ears. “Okay, it goes like this: the land Macabre sits on was originally purchased back in the early 80s by a Motortown mogul with some kind of vision. He wanted a place in the country where city folks could get away to a more natural life-style. He bought over 200 acres of land, fenced in a lot of it, imported a shitload of animal life, and started to build extravagant log lodges in the heart of the forest.

“He called it _Gaia’s Compound_ in the ad blurbs.”

The flight attendant had reached their seats. Frohike held out some crumpled bills. “I’ll take a beer.”

Scully unfolded her tray. “Coffee, one creamer.”

Langly shook his head. His stomach lurched slightly at a barely perceptible vibration under his feet. “Nothing, thanks.”

Scully passed the beer to Frohike, then took her coffee and added the creamer. “Are you going somewhere with this narrative, Langly?”

“Don’t be such a hard bitch all the time.” The words were out before he could censor them. Langly saw her fingers freeze on the rim of her cup, and felt his own blood start to ice up.

“He didn’t mean it.” Frohike stared at him, eyes wide and amazed.

“He did.” Scully lifted the coffee to her lips, sipped. “Please continue with the background information.”

“Scully. I’m sorry,” Langly said through clenched teeth. He knew it was just a habit with her, but when was she going to realize she was with friends?

“No, you’re not. I am a hard bitch sometimes. Now, if you don’t keep talking, I’m going to pinch that bony knee poking at me.”

Langly looked down in horror at his wayward leg.

“Gaia’s Compound went bust,” he continued hastily. He shifted in his seat, moving the knee to safety. “The mogul didn’t know squat about nature. A combination of personal and financial problems resulted in ownership of the property passing back to the banks. The place stayed empty for a couple of years. Nobody in their right mind seemed to want an expensive white elephant in the middle of nowhere.”

“Casino,” Frohike suggested.

“Maybe today,” Langly agreed. “But nearly fifteen years ago a man named MacKenzie bought the land with money he’d won in the lottery. Like so many people who hit the jackpot, MacKenzie set about trying to realize a lifetime dream. Although he’d spent most of his adult years as a copywriter specializing in real estate brochures, in his Mitty-moments MacKenzie always imagined himself as a bestselling science fiction writer.”

“He named the place Macabre,” Scully said slowly. “And you said it’s a kind of association, with writers. Science fiction writers?”

“Science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comics,” Langly said. “No mainstream artists allowed. It’s in the charter.”

“Is your uncle a writer?” Frohike asked.

“No. Graphic artist.” Langly tried to move his headrest into recline mode. His neck hurt, and from the pressure on his bladder it seemed inevitable he’d have to use the facilities before they landed. Closet-size, stainless steel johns smelling of that chemical and organic stew peculiar to airplanes made him feel nauseated and claustrophobic.

“You don’t like to fly, do you?” Scully smiled.

The smile was like the moment when the plan breaks above the cloud line. “Driving’s better,” Langly agreed, grinning past her at Frohike. “Nice to see her smiling sans drugs.”

The smile faded from Scully’s face. “You could have just asked,” she said.

“Asked?” Langly began to kick his own butt internally.

“Las Vegas.” Scully neatly dropped her trash into the empty coffee cup, handed it to Langly, then returned her tray to its original position.

“Now, Scully . . .” Frohike began.

“You could have called and asked for help. You could have said, _Scully, come to Vegas. Mulder’s too high profile, and we really need one of you._ You could have told me the truth.”

Her hands were folded in her lap, fingers carefully laced together. Langly fought an urge to lay his own fingers over Scully’s, and mutter incoherent reassurances.

“We’ve been through bad situations together. You three know more about me than my own mother does. Didn’t it occur to you that tricking me, that using me like that makes you no better than Them?”

Frohike looke between them, anxiously. “We said we were sorry, Scully.”

“Shit.” Langly took off his glasses and began to polish them on his t-shirt. This was old business, he thought stubbornly, using part of the shirt to wipe the sweat off his face. “One apology should have been plenty.”

The rotten thing was that she was absolutely right. They hadn’t trusted her to help them. The toys were so powerful, so seductive. Langly knew that down in his dark place there was an amoral overlord that exulted in the abilities the technology provided, regardless of consequences. He knew the human thing to do, the right thing to do, would have been to just ask for her help.

“I’ll never try to trick you again, Scully,” Langly said finally. “Is that good enough?”

She took a moment before she answered. “Yes.”

“Cool. We’re buds.” Frohike gave him the thumbs-up.

“Shut up, Frohike.” Scully closed her eyes, tilting her head back on the seat. “What made your uncle think he’s got an X-file in Macabre? You haven’t said anything about the deaths.”

“I don’t know much. Dash said one of his best friends was dead, and he’d seen some kind of monster,” Langly said.

“Monster?” Frohike kicked Scully’s leg as he surged forward against his seatbelt.

“Stop that.” Scully opened her eyes. “It figures. A monster in Macabre. It had to be a monster.”

“So, how come you never told me about your uncle?” Frohike asked. “What does he do - illustrations? Book covers? Bigfoot portraits?”

“Not exactly.” Langly knew he was postponing the moment when Frohike would realize the depth of his betrayal. He unclipped his seat belt. “Gotta hit the head.”

Langly made his way toward the back of the plane. He knew Frohike would be outraged when he learned the secret he had been unable to share with his friend.


	3. Chapter 3

**10:30 p.m. Michigan  
Near the gates of Macabre**

 

 _The taste. The taste._

 _Now-familiar terrain surged past as it followed the gamesplayer’s spoor._

 _It had been scenting lingering molecules of evidence since the first tantalizing whiff drifted down dark tunnels to tickle it from lengthy hibernation._

 _But the gamesplayer was crafty. There had been a thing saturated with gamesplayer essence. A clever decoy, the creature had discovered in one quick taste._

 _It was being teased. It was being called. It was happier than it had been in uncounted rotations of this wonderful playground._

 _Come. Play. Seek. Hide._

 _The creature left its own scent on the land as it romped._

 

“Stop it. Stop it. Let me hold the damn thing near the light.”

Scully tried to pull the map away from him, and Langly finally gave up and let her have the crumpled paper. Frohike hung over the seat, thrusting his head close to Scully’s as she tried to find their location.

“It’s not my fault. I’ve never been here before,” Langly pointed out. “The man at the rental place did say you had to pay attention to the turns.”

“I did,” Scully said. She threw the map at him. “We’re going to drive for another two miles, then turn around and retrace our route.”

“Hold that thought,” Frohike said. He opened one of the car’s back doors and slid out. “I’m going to commune with nature for a minute.”

“Can’t you two just say you need to use a bathroom?” Scully complained.

Langly opened his door, and swung his legs out to rest on the roadside. “No bathroom here.”

The night air was cool and sweetly free of the scent of city toxins and petroleum by-products. Langly half-turned back toward Scully.

“Put your window down. Hear that?”

Scully pressed the window control.

 _Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will._

The bird’s cry carried past the sounds of rustling leaves and tree limbs rubbing together.

“I’ve never heard one before,” Langly said, recapturing for a moment the sense of accomplishment he’d once felt when entering a new sighting. “I used to keep a bird journal.”

“What do you suppose Will did?” Scully asked.

Langly wondered if he’d heard her words correctly. He risked a sideways look, and saw she was smiling at him.

He smiled back, tentatively. Damn, she had her moments. When she smiled she was almost as pretty as Frohike made her out to be.

“Hoo boy!” Frohike came shooting in through the back door.

Langly pulled in his feet and slammed his door in startled reflex. “Monster in the bushes, man?”

“I think I stepped in a bog.” Frohike wiped his foot on the edge of the door frame.

“Pull your legs in or leave them here,” Scully warned, glancing down at the odometer. “Two miles, Langly.”

The car’s lights made a tunnel down the center of the black road, and the forest on either side fell away into shadow caverns woven between looming trees. Langly stuck his head out the window and hoped no night-flying bugs were in their path. He saw the headlights shine off metal just beyond the treeline.

“Look. Fencing,” Langly pointed at the right-hand side of the road. “Expensive, electric fencing. We must be close. There’s a turn-off ahead.”

Scully took her foot off the gas at the same moment Langly announced the turn. The car slowed, then eased into a crushed stone driveway.

Ornate metal gates spanned the road, with two cameras that Langly could see panning in their direction. A small plaque with reflective letters verified their destination.

“Macabre. Nice.” Frohike hung over the seat again, breathing near Scully’s ear. “It’s not state-of-the-art, but very good equipment, I’d say.”

“How do we get in?” Scully asked.

“Wait a minute.” Langly opened his door and began to walk toward one of the gate’s corner posts. He heard a low humming noise, then the gates began to swing open.

“That was easy.” He got back in the car. “Follow the white crushed-stone road, Scully.”

Frohike laughed. “Follow, follow, follow, follow,” he began to sing.

“Reach back and hit him,” Scully said, barely moving her lips.

Fifty feet into the forest they found the gatehouse.

Scully let the car coast along the narrow road. Lights glimmered, then clearly illuminated a small structure. A man moved toward them, waving his arms. Scully pulled the car onto the grassy verge of the road.

The man walked in front of the car, and stopped by Langly’s window. He was old, Langly saw. Silver-grey hair confined in a long ponytail, and darkly tanned skin that looked like a relief-map of Nevada, put his age at somewhere past 65.

“Welcome. You’re the Langly kid? Your uncle’s waiting for you.”

There was curiosity in the eyes under the upswept grey eyebrows. Curiosity and something else, Langly thought. Wariness?

“Thanks. How do we find him?”

“Keep on the main road here. Take the third crossroad to the left, and follow it until it stops. Dash has the only house at that end of Stan Lee Drive.” The man backed away from the car. “I’m Jeff. See you later.”

More lights appeared in clusters through the woods as they followed the road. When they rolled past the first cross street, Frohike began to laugh.

“Hubbard Way. I think I see a pattern already.” He poked at Langly’s shoulder. “So your uncle lives on Stan Lee Drive? Any significance to that?”

Langly shrugged. The second cross-street marker flashed whitely, then disappeared as the car lights slid off the luminous painted metal. “Ellison Lane. I’d say a definite pattern.”

“What are you talking about?” Scully took the turn slowly, the crunch of the dirt and rocks under car tires sounding loud in the country night.

“The streets are named after famous genre authors and artists,” Langly said.

“Genre?” Scully frowned. “Harlan Ellison,” she said slowly. “I’ve heard of him, but not the others.”

The road ended with a wall of tree trunks and yard-high fieldstone boulders that sparkled when the headlights hit them. Langly could see two small globes of light marking a path that led away from the road.

Scully parked next to the boulders. They sat in silence as the car noise gave way to the rustling, creaking sounds from the forest around them. It was dark, Langly realized as the headlights disappeared, country dark. Here there was no indirect light from nearby business districts, no creeping half-light from block after block of suburban streetlights.

He stepped out of the car. The moonless sky could be glimpsed between gaps in the foliage as patches of star-studded blackness.

“Leave the stuff here,” Frohike said, already moving past the light globes.

Langly let Scully walk ahead of him. Wind moved through the trees and underbrush with a sound like surf on a shore, leaving cool dampness when it touched skin. The path ended in stone steps and a wide porch bathed in yellow light.

“We’re expected.” Langly stepped up and touched the doorbell. He stared at his own reflection, swimming vaguely green and distorted, in an eye-high oval insert that looked like an opaque, useless window.

“It’s a big house,” Scully paced down the length of the porch. “The logs they used to build it are enormous.”

The door opened.

“Ringo! Jeff rang from the gate. Glad you’re here.”

The air was being squeezed from his body. Langly made an effort to return his uncle’s hug, then staggered backward as Dash released his grip. “Quite a place,” he managed to say as his lungs began to fill with air again. He turned toward Frohike and Scully. “This is Scully, F.B.I.; and I’ve told you about Frohike.”

“You really suck at introductions, boy.”

Dash’s naturally husky voice sounded rougher, Langly thought, like he was recovering from a sore throat or cold.

Dash grabbed Frohike’s hand and gave it a shake. “You’re Melvin Frohike. And this little pocket rocket is the agent? You both can call me Dash.”

Scully stared up at Dash’s red beard. The last time Langly had seen his uncle, he’d only worn a moustache. The hair was longer, too, and grizzled with more white than red. Other physical changes were minor. Dash seemed leaner and harder under the softly worn flannel shirt and loose jeans, and he wore two hoop earrings instead of one.

“A pleasure.” Scully’s hand was enveloped in one of Dash’s. She still stared at his beard.

It was the combination of long hair, earrings and facial fuzz, Langly decided. Women thought about pirates, and it touched some atavistic romantic response. He brushed his own hair back. Some chicks really dug the hair. He’d had his share of eager fingers exploring his locks. None recently, but everybody had dry spells.

“Come into the library.” Dash released Scully’s hand and led them through the double door to the left of the entry. “What can I get you to drink? Beer, tea, something harder?”

“Nothing for me." Scully seated herself in a patchwork-cushioned rocker and looked around the room.

“I’d take a beer,” Frohike said. “With an option on something harder later.”

“Ringo?” Dash paused in the doorway. “Beer?”

“Sure.” It was going to happen any minute, Langly knew. He watched Dash leave to get the drinks, watched Frohike’s head swivel around inspecting the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the hand-painted, leather-laced shades that covered the wrought-iron wall lights. He watched Frohike walk toward the piece of art that hung over the fireplace on the wall opposite the entry door.

“Holy shit.” Frohike stared up at the painting. “I think it’s an original. It must be worth a small fortune.”

“What is it?” Scully left her chair to join Frohike in front of the fireplace. She frowned at the somberly-colored depiction of a male figure reaching over the side of a boat to pull a nearly nude female figure out of a stormy sea. “It looks like an oversized comic panel.”

“That’s CyberMerc!” Frohike was almost drooling. “Come and look at this, Langly. Your uncle has an original Joe Cool hanging in his library. I even recognize the issue this panel is from. It’s the only one I don’t own. Issue one: _Life from Death_.”

“There weren’t many printed.” Dash had returned with the beer. “Ringo didn’t tell me you were a fan.”

Frohike turned, and Langly saw the second that enlightenment dawned.

“You sorry sonuva . . . Stan Lee Drive.” Frohike shook his head, momentarily wordless.

“I don’t understand.” Scully looked between them, puzzled.

“He’s Joe Cool.” Frohike found his voice. “Creator of CyberMerc.”

“I’m sorry.” Scully was plainly out of her depth. “You draw comics? I’ve never heard of this one.”

“I’ll show you my studio.” Dash winked at her. He handed off the beers and gestured toward the furniture. “Sit down. We’ll talk comics later, Melvin,” he promised.

“After I kill your nephew,” Frohike muttered as he sat on the couch next to Langly.

“It wasn’t my secret, man,” Langly said. Frohike was taking it better than he’d expected.

“It’s getting late.” Scully returned to the rocker. “Is there a motel or rental cabins I can check into?”

“You’re staying here.” Dash grinned a one-cornered, pirate smile. “There are four empty bedrooms upstairs. I made the beds and opened the windows.”

“Thank you.” Scully’s eyes seemed drawn toward the art over the fireplace. “We left our bags in the car.”

“Ringo and Melvin can get them in a while.” Dash went to sit in the leather recliner at the end of the couch. “You’re doing this on your own time, agent Scully?”

“Yes. So you can drop the ‘agent.’ A friend asked me to take a few days off and visit Michigan,” she said carefully. “My name is Dana.”

“It's the greatest blessing to have good friends.” Dash crossed his legs and stared at the fireplace. “I lost one of mine recently.”

“Tell me why you called Skinner,” Scully said. “You know the F.B.I. never received any request for help with whatever happened here.”

“Unless another unexplainable death occurs, they’re done investigating,” Dash said.

Langly could hear the pain in his uncle’s voice.

“I don’t understand a lot of things about what happened out in the woods -- but lack of understanding doesn’t seem to disturb the thought processes of local law enforcement.” Dash left the recliner with a rapid motion. “Come into the studio. I’m more comfortable there.”

They followed him out of the library, across the entry, toward an identical set of double doors in the far wall. Langly heard Frohike suck in a huge breath as Dash turned on the lights.

CyberMerc was everywhere. Drawings were tacked up on the unfinished, knobby log walls and displayed under plexiglass on easels. Frohike turned about in circles, trying to take it all in.

Dash scooped a pile of paper off a couch. “Ringo, Melvin, take a load off.” He dumped the paper onto a small bed against a far back corner.

“Agent Scully, would you do me a favor?” Dash picked up a tall stool and positioned it in the middle of the room, in front of a drafting table. “Sit here for a minute. I’d like to sketch your face.”

Scully’s eyebrows went north. Langly felt Frohike’s elbow in his ribs, and heard his friend snort as she sat down on the stool without any pointed Scully-isms.

“She must like him,” Frohike whispered. “She didn’t bite his butt off.”

It didn’t surprise Langly. Most women liked Dash.

“Tell me about the monster.” Scully sat with her spine arrow straight, feet resting on one of the stool rungs, arms folded loosely in her lap.

Dash secured a blank piece of paper on his work table. “Let me tell you the story from the beginning.”

Langly found himself looking into Scully’s eyes. She was amused, he saw it in the way she tried to suck in her bottom lip to keep from smiling.

“Must be a family thing,” she said, “the art of where to begin telling a story.”

Dash laughed as his hand moved over the paper. “That’s not a subject you want to discuss in Macabre, unless you’re wearing chainmail, and have the intestinal fortitude of a grand inquisitor.”

“This must be an interesting place to live.”

“Interesting.” The word had a gritty sound, and Dash turned his head away as he started to cough. He took a long swallow of beer, cleared his throat, and went back to sketching.

“We found Harry’s body out near the edge of the swamp about six weeks ago.” Dash sat back and stared at what he’d drawn. “Dave and I were hiking in the area. If I hadn’t seen the body myself, I might have accepted Gwen’s death later, without question. If I hadn’t seen Harry’s body, Gwen might still be alive.”

Langly recognized the way Dash was holding his shoulders, his hands. He’d seen his uncle in uniform, at Memorial Day parades, when he was younger. In the space of a heartbeat Dash had become the solider Langly privately thought of as the real CyberMerc.

“There are rocky, overhanging bluffs out there, just before the land turns to scrub and swamp. Harry used to photograph the twist of tree roots over bare stone, the way sudden rain would create miniature waterfalls. It was raining the day he died.”

“Harry was a resident of Macabre?” Scully asked.

“Yes. Alien landscape artist. He used his photos to create computer enhanced graphic illustrations. Mostly for the house rag.”

“House rag?” Scully frowned.

“Don’t frown, Rocket. You must do that a lot. I can already see where the wrinkles will be permanently in another five years.” Dash laughed as her frown deepened. “You’re not a vain woman, I can tell from that response, and your pants suit. I don’t suppose you’d let me draw you nude?”

The wrinkles disappeared as Scully’s eyes widened. Langly heard Frohike’s quiet laugh, saw Dash lean forward to continue his sketch, the soldier once again submerged in the artist. Up to his old tricks, Langly thought, even if Scully wasn’t his usual kind of female prey. The little nicknames, the jokes and winks, the offer to view his sketches . . . but the women were usually the ones who offered to do the posing.

“How much has Ringo told you about Macabre? We’ve got our own publishing house, our own magazine and distribution system, our own web site. Many of the artists and writers here find their only professional outlet in _Merely Macabre: the Magazine._ ” Dash ran his hand over his moustache, curled several long hairs around one finger and winked at Scully. “Even I contribute once in a while.”

“I didn’t realize Macabre was a commercial enterprise,” Scully said. “What happened to Harry?”

“They said he slipped on a wet tree root, fell down the side of a bluff, and hit his head on a rock. Broke his neck.” Dash finished the sketch with a flourish of initials. “I think that’s mostly true. Jeff and I went up top after we found Harry. Jeff’s a hell of a tracker. It was wet, still raining. Jeff said Harry was running from something.”

“Something?” Frohike leaned forward. “Your monster?”

“You can talk to Jeff about what he saw. He found a couple of unidentifiable tracks that puzzled him,” Dash said. “There are black bear out in the swamp, even a few bobcat and gray wolves. Reports of these animals attacking people are rare to nonexistent. Harry’d been dead about a day when we found him. No animal I know of could be responsible for the bite on his arm.”

“Bite?” Scully left her stool, walked around the drafting table to get a look the sketch.

“I call it a bite, because that’s what the coroner called it. There was a semicircular piece of flesh, and t-shirt, missing from Harry’s left bicep. About a half-cup of meat gone, like something had scooped it out with an ice-cream scooper.”

Scully stared at the drafting board with an expression Langly had never seen on her face before. He pushed himself off the couch.

“No teeth marks?” Langly asked as he stepped behind Dash.

“The wound was smooth, almost glassy-textured,” Dash said, beginning to cough again. “The fabric of the t-shirt looked like it had been melted with a hot iron. Excuse me.”

Langly moved aside as Dash stood and left the room. He looked at Scully who still stared, mesmerized at the sketch.

“Do I really look like that?”

It was a Scully that Langly had only seen in quick glimpses, a Scully that lived so far beneath the professional, hard bitch exterior that Langly sometimes wondered if she really existed. The face was serene, unlined. But the eyes . . .

Langly backed off, blinking his own eyes several times. Where had Dash found that sorrow in her?

“It’s you, but it’s more.” Langly turned to study a CyberMerc panel. He’d known Dash was a talented comics artist. It was a shock to contemplate that his uncle might have been something greater.

He heard Frohike’s exclamation, and knew his friend had gone to look at the sketch.

“How about some scotch?” Dash returned with a bottle and glasses. “I don’t usually talk this much. Need a little lubrication.”

“That cough sounds bad.” Scully moved away from the drafting table self-consciously.

“Allergies.” Dash shrugged. He put the bottle on the table, began to fill the glasses.

Allergies, Langly thought uneasily. Dash had always had these 'allergies' that brought on periods of ill health. He could remember his father telling someone Dash had come home from Nam sick in spirit and body. But as far as Langly knew, Dash had been better for the last several years. The cough sounded bad, though.

“None for me,” Scully protested.

“A small one,” Dash said, turning to offer her a finger’s breadth of amber liquor. “It’ll help you relax.” He tilted his own glass back once before refilling it.

“Melvin? Ringo?”

They took the glasses. Frohike slugged his back like Dash had.

“Help yourself for refills.” Dash crossed to the wall beside the bed and opened the window blinds. He pulled a small brass lever, then pushed up the bottom portion of the window. Cool night air blew in, sending paper dancing off the computer station located near the foot of the bed. “I don’t sleep with the window open any more. You should probably close yours upstairs, before you go to sleep.”

The skin on Langly’s arms felt cold and puckery as fresh air blew into his corner. He shivered and took a quick drink of scotch. Scully was unimpressed by the warning, he could see. She’s forgotten what normal is, Langly thought, surprised by an urge to comfort and protect her.

 _Whoa!_ He looked at his glass and set it aside. No more booze tonight. Like Scully needed any protection he might be able to provide.

“The reports I read said the coroner ruled this death accidental. There was no mention of an animal attack.” Scully sipped at her drink.

“It happened after he was dead,” Dash said. “The coroner wouldn’t be more exact. He got testy, said although he couldn’t explain the odd nature of the wound, Harry had been dead sometime before it happened. They left it at that.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.” Scully studied a CyberMerc painting thoughtfully. “Tell me about the next death.”

“The monster comes first.” Dash took his seat back at the drafting table next to the scotch bottle. “Three weeks after we found Harry, I went for a night stalk. It was about 3 a.m. Beautiful night, like tonight. I was out near the swamp line, close to the place we found Harry.”

“Night stalk?” Scully asked, turning to watch Dash as he answered.

Dash lifted his glass toward her. “Like it sounds, agent. Black clothes, night vision goggles. I sneak around and watch things.”

Frohike choked on his scotch.

“Things, not people?” Scully asked. Her voice carried both question and innuendo.

“Mostly animals,” Dash agreed. “Although if there are people moving around outside at that time of the morning, I notice. I don’t watch bedroom windows, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I know very little about you,” Scully said. “Asking direct questions is one way to learn more.”

“Ask me anything, Rocket,” Dash said softly, his rough voice pitched to an intimate rasp for Scully’s benefit. “I go out when I can’t sleep, when I need to think about my next story line. It’s what I do instead of attend church.”

Langly smiled. Dash really hadn’t changed much.

“And you saw a monster.”

She wasn’t going to say anything about the nickname, Langly realized, but it bugged her. She was using her _Mulder-you-saw-what?_ tone of voice on Dash, with about the same amount of impact it had on Mulder.

“It’s my line of work,” Dash tried to hide a huge grin by lifting his glass again. “Substitute the phrase ‘unknown creature’ for monster, if you want. It was something that shouldn’t be alive on earth today. If I saw a dinosaur, I’d probably call it a monster too.”

“I don’t suppose you could be more specific?”

Sarcasm again. She was definitely into Mulder-interrogation-mode now, Langly thought.

“I can share the clues I have.” Dash pointed at the paper-strewn shelves behind her. “See that towel at the far end? Look underneath.”

Scully obeyed the suggestion. She lifted the towel and stared at the object. “Is it a skull?” she asked.

“Can you identify it, Ringo? You were always interested in fossils when you were a kid.”

“Cool. ‘Scuse me, Scully.” He found himself almost pushing her aside as he realized the possible age of the skull. Langly picked the fossil up gingerly, turned it over in awe. “Where’d you get this?”

“I found it at the far end of the bluffs, where it’s mostly rock,” Dash said. “Well, professor?”

Frohike came to hover over his shoulder, exclaiming in interest. “Bear? That’s an odd mineral deposit around the eyes.”

“Ursus spelaeus,” Langly shook his head. “Who could have put it out there? It’s in great shape, it should be in a museum.”

“What makes you think someone put it out there?” Scully asked.

“It’s not something you’d find around here. Europe, Asia . . . that’s where the best examples of cave bear fossils come from.” Langly studied the skull closely. “There are some fresh scores on the surface. Where’d you find it?”

“Rock slide. I think it must have happened during the big rain when Harry checked out.” Dash rubbed his eyes, and cleared this throat. “I found the skull a month back. Three weeks ago I saw a live one, moving through the swamp.”

Langly looked from the skull in his hands to his uncle’s face. He wasn’t kidding. The soldier was back, meeting the question in Langly’s eyes with steely assurance.

“We’re talking Pleistocene here, Dash.” Langly saw Dash nod. His uncle knew the impossibility of what he was telling them. “Way extinct.”

“Bigfoot,” Frohike muttered. “What did it look like?”

“Shit.” Dash started to laugh, then broke off coughing. “I’m a blind fool. I live in weirdo central, yet I never thought of that, Melvin. It would probably qualify, if Bigfoot looks like an SUV covered with yak dreds.”

“Could be Bigfoot,” Frohike said, grinning back. “That description doesn’t fit any animal I’ve ever heard of.”

“I only got one good look at it. It was in the standing water, and I don’t go in there.” Dash shook his head. “I can’t make it through the muck and quicksand, but this 12-foot-high animal, that had to weigh a ton or more, cruised along like it had highway under it.

“After it disappeared I went home for the night. I got up early the next morning, woke Jeff and hauled him back out there. He found more tracks, and took photos.”

Dash watched them, assessing their reactions, and Scully watched Dash with the same quality of evaluation. Langly saw when their eyes met, saw the silent, unintentional exchange of information.

They were both soldiers, Langly thought. Soldiers who had seen too much, made decisions too hard for most people to bear. Soldiers who carried wounds that lay deep in the soul.

“Tell me about the second death,” Scully said.

“Gwen.” Dash picked up his glass and the scotch bottle. “Let’s go to the porch. I can’t sit still in here unless I’m working.”

He’d always been moving around, Langly remembered as he followed Dash out of the house. Dash would show up during the first week of May to visit for a while, give them his new address, and disappear for another year after the calendar turned to June. California, Nevada, Washington state, Mexico. There’d even been one year Langly had returned postcard messages to Japan.

When Dash told his family the news he’d bought a home in Michigan, Langly had never expected him to stay put. But fourteen years later Dash was still getting his mail in Macabre.

Langly sat in one of the wicker armchairs against the front of the house. Frohike was getting a refill on his drink, and Scully settled in the white wood porch swing. She rocked gently, her feet just touching the floor. Dash set the bottle and his glass down on a wicker end table, and fished a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He sat on the log railing, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke into the night. The coughing started again almost immediately.

“Put it out,” Scully said.

Dash took another drag, then dropped the cigarette into the landscaping gravel that lined the base of the porch. “I only smoke one a day, Rocket.” He winked at her.

Scully sat back in the swing, crossed her arms, and frowned.

“Wrinkles,” Dash said, grinning.

The grin faded. Dash looked away from Scully, out toward the black tree line and the distant glimmer from the path lights.

“Gwen was a good friend. A lover.” Dash turned to face them fully. “The police don’t like that. I found Harry, I found Gwen.

“It’s been dry here this spring. It rained six weeks ago when Harry died, then again two weeks ago when Gwen was killed. There’s an orange sign on Smokey the Bear in front of the DNR field office in town that says _Fire Danger: Extreme._ Kind of ironic.”

“In town. That’s Manitou?” Scully asked. “The reports Skinner gave me came from the Nokomis County Police Department, in Manitou.”

“Yes. We’re in their jurisdiction,” Dash agreed. “Short story: there was a lightning storm that night, and Gwen was camping on the bluffs. There must have been a strike near her camp. About six acres were pretty well burned to a crisp before mother nature poured enough water on the area to kill the fire. I found Gwen under a tree fall. She was badly burned. The coroner says she died from a blow to the head -- presumably from a tree limb -- and smoke inhalation.”

“Why was she out there?” Scully stopped rocking in the swing. “Did you tell her what you’d seen?”

“I told her.”

The pain in his voice was almost embarrassingly raw. Langly shut his eyes and wished there was something he could say that wouldn’t sound forced or cliched.

“Sorry, man.” Frohike filled in the awkward gap.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Dash shrugged. “I said I live in weirdo central. That’s an understatement. Macabre is full of marchers who hear cosmic didjeridoos, sitars, washboard bands or celestial harps. Gwen was a sweetheart, but she fit right into the community.”

“In what way?” Scully prompted as Dash paused.

“Anything I say is going to make her sound like a nut,” Dash seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Gwen qualified for residence in Macabre because she wrote self-awareness pamphlets. New Age stuff. She was an astral traveler.”

“Astral traveler?” Scully began to rock again, and Langly could see she was preparing to add Dash’s explanation to her catalogue of the strange and mostly unexplainable.

“Her term,” Dash said. “It started when she was a kid. Every night she’d have vivid dreams about other lives. One night she’d be in Egypt, a priest in some temple. One night she’d be the matriarch of a skin-covered tribe living in caves. One night she’d be with blue-skinned things in a star system light years away from earth. As she got older the dreams got fewer, so she tried hypnotic regression. It didn’t work very well with her. But although the dreams came less frequently, Gwen claimed she was beginning to be able to direct them, as a result of the hypnosis. Helped her focus, she thought.”

A clamorous crashing and yelping in the woods beyond the front porch brought Langly to his feet. Frohike swore, and Scully reached toward the purse she was still carried over her shoulder. Gun. Good, Langly thought. He found himself standing next to Dash by the railing.

“Stupid son-of-a-bitch.” Dash reached out and pushed Langly toward the house. “Get them inside.”

“What is it?” Scully had her hand in her purse.

Dash saw the gesture, and began to laugh. “What do you smell, agent?”

The acrid, oily scent the wind carried to envelop the porch hit them all at the same breath. Langly felt his nasal passages protest, and his eyes begin to water.

“Skunk,” Scully said, pulling her hand out of the purse. “Your dog?”

“No, unfortunately.” Dash left the porch. “Wait in the library, I’ll be back in a minute. Give me your car keys. I’ll bring your stuff up on the way back.”

Scully tossed him her keys. “If you get skunked, don’t touch my bags,” she warned.

Dash caught the keys, saluted, and seemed to fade away into the trees.

They shut the front door, and most of the smell, behind them.

“Things I miss living in the city.” Frohike had stopped to gather the bottle and glasses. He made himself comfortable on the library couch and poured more scotch. “Fresh air, Bambi, Thumper, Bigfoot.”

“How long has Dash had that cough?” Scully stood by the bookshelves, reading book titles. When she saw the pile of comic books in a far corner on the lowest shelf, she crouched for a closer look. “CyberMerc: Vendetta. CyberMerc: Soul Camouflage. CyberMerc: The Color of Cats.”

Langly looked over her shoulder at the glossy covers, most depicting a futuristically body-armored CyberMerc in extremis, with a well-endowed woman in the foreground. “Maybe the last ten years or so.” The doctor was in, Langly thought, from the sound in her voice. “Not this bad, though.”

Scully pushed the comics back into a neat pile, her face revealing what she thought of the art.

“Don’t judge the comic by the cover,” Langly advised. “Read one. Comics are one of our century’s most successful vehicles in disseminating modern myths and legends.”

“He’s right, Scully,” Frohike said. “The stories in the CyberMerc series have universal themes of betrayal and redemption; victory in adversity; acceptance of grief and loss; coming to terms with the fact that life is a sea of chaos, and our lifeboats can barely float. Hard stuff to read sometimes, even in comic form.”

“Not a review that makes me want to rush out and buy a copy,” Scully said as she stopped in front of a small row of photographs lined up on a lower shelf. She picked up a small, pewter-framed photo. “You were a cute little tyke, Langly.”

She held his senior picture, Langly realized, wincing. “Shit. I didn’t know Dash had that.”

“Let me see.” Frohike jumped up to take a look. “Man, you look like Sir Galahad. Cute page-boy, Langly.”

“Shut up, Melvin. Want me to show her that New Year’s pic where you were wearing the diaper?” Langly took the frame from Scully’s hands and pushed it behind the others.

Scully ignored the exchange and pointed to another frame. “Wedding photo? She’s wearing white, although he seems casual. Is Dash currently married?”

“No. They were married for about five years, then got divorced. The family hasn’t seen her in years.”

Langly knew he wasn’t the only one in the family who didn’t care what had happened to Sheena. She had great hooters, but a personality and voice that whined and grated. From the distance of time, and a more mature understanding of life, Langly supposed they had married because Sheena was knocked up.

“No children?”

“No.” Langly stared at a younger, happier Dash. “Sheena had two miscarriages and a stillbirth. She blamed Dash. She blamed Nam. She dumped him and sent him papers to sign.”

Scully moved away from the photos and stood by the fireplace. “What about drug use, Langly. Is there any possibility his cave bear sighting is the result of chemical stimulation?”

“That would surprise the hell out of me,” Langly shook his head. “Dash likes scotch. He wouldn’t even smoke weed. Claimed it put him to sleep.”

The front door opened and shut quickly.

“I figured Gray got sprayed. I was right.” Dash called from the entry. “I’ll leave your bags out here.” He came to stand in the library doorway. “You can go up to your rooms, or stay down here a while longer. I’m going to chase down the damn dog, and get him back into his kennel. If I don’t, he’ll rush Chris in the morning, and contaminate her living room.”

“I’ll go with,” Frohike volunteered.

Dash looked him over, then nodded. “Okay. But be prepared. Gray is nearly as big as you are -- and he’s affectionate.”

Frohike’s eyes gleamed with scotch and anticipation. “You’re on point, man. I’ll be right behind you.”

Two of a kind there, Langly thought as Frohike trailed out the door behind Dash. Good men and true. Warriors and adventurers. Sly hunters who could track a stinking dog . . .

“I’m going upstairs. I think I’ll read for a while before going to sleep.” Scully’s voice brought Langly back from the Land of Macho. She was standing in the library door holding a handful of comics.

“Okay.” Langly pulled his duffel and the case with the laptop to one side. “I’ll sit down here until they get back. I’ve got to go on-line and talk with Byers.”

Scully slung one bag over her shoulder, and shortened the handle on her wheeled carryall so she could carry it up the stairs.

“Good night.”

“Night, Scully. Shut your window,” Langly reminded her.

She was actually easier to travel with than the guys were, Langly thought as she disappeared around the head of the stairway. She didn’t fuss, and she stayed focused. Good qualities to find in a woman -- or in a man.

Langly opened his duffel and groped in the wadded clothing until his fingers located a small leather case. Frohike had thrown in the digital camera at the last minute. A smart move, as it turned out. He’d take a shot of the skull and send it to Byers.

 _Having a great time, wish you were here._ Langly grinned as he unpacked the laptop, then headed toward the studio. Byers was unhappy at being left home. When he heard the details he would move beyond unhappy straight to pissed. He wasn’t a CyberMerc fan like Frohike, but the skull would leave him drooling.

“How’d you get here, baby?” Langly looked at the discolored sweep of antique bone. Impossible to think the thing Dash had seen had any connection with this skull.

Langly set up his computer next to the studio’s workstation, and prepared to download the photo.


	4. Chapter 4

**Midnight – Friday morning: Cthulhu Woods**

“Did you say you had goggles?”

Dash stopped at the boundary where his landscaping turned into forest. “We won’t need them.” He shut his eyes and listened to the small sounds that told him Frohike was close beside him. He’d seen men like Frohike before, men who looked like eccentric, aging gnomes. Dash knew that often the men inside these ill-fitting skin suits were amazing creatures.

“The thing I saw seems to avoid settled places,” Dash said. His eyes were adjusting to the night. He could see the faint line of footpath that led toward Gray’s yard. “Follow me. The worst we’ll probably find tonight is another skunk.”

The forest rustled around them like an old-fashion taffeta skirt. The almost hypnotic soughing of the trees was interrupted by quick cracks of tiny twigs under the thick bushes that lined the path. Privates in the chipmunk army that mustered around Macabre’s homes, Dash knew.

Frohike followed with quiet night grace. Dash could hear the smallest repetition of the noises that his own feet made. A good man in the woods, this one.

The skunk smell had already pushed his olfactory perception past the point of usefulness. The entire world reeked.

The path branched.

“If we’re lucky, the damn fool is taking his trophy back to his own territory.” Dash could see the ghostly outline of Frohike’s face nod. “If we’re not -- well, Gray likes to swim down at the pond.”

Small white lights glimmered ahead. They were near the clearing where Gray’s kennel sat behind the house. Chris was probably sound asleep.

They found the skunk carcass next to the hole beside the kennel.

“Are we looking for a dog, or a backhoe?” Frohike stared at the hump of dirt, and yawning pit that led under the steel chain fence to dog-freedom.

“A little bit of both.” Dash scanned the area, whistled softly, then listened. “We'll try the pond. The sonnuvabitch probably went to wash his eyes out.”

The trail between Cthulhu Woods and the pond was wider, beaten down to sand by constant traffic. Somebody in the area was still awake. Dash could hear faint bits of music rise and fall. It was brighter here, with more ambient light coming from the houses in LeGuin Court.

Dash slowed as the woods thinned. “Before we go down toward the water, there’s something I want to check out. Wait here.”

Dash slipped toward the house at the far edge of LeGuin Court, keeping close to bushes and tree trunks. He’d done this once, sometimes twice, a night since he’d seen the new man walking circles around Macabre in the dark.

The new man lived in the lodge nearest the pond. He’d introduced himself as William Darke, struggling science fiction writer, when he’d moved in about six months back. He was a tall, solid man with generic Caucasian features who spoke with a casual Midwestern twang. He never went out as far as the bluffs, and always walked after midnight.

Dim lights glowed behind heavy drapes on the ground floor. Darke was probably out, Dash thought as he crouched next to a small bush ringed with stones. He shut his eyes and listened. The yard was too quiet. He’d noticed the quiet the first time he’d spied on Darke. The chippies, so abundant everywhere else, seemed to be absent here.

What would agent Scully say if he elaborated on the suspicious events surrounding the death of his friend, Dash wondered. She’d swallowed the monster sighting whole, and hadn’t blinked at his description of Gwen’s life-style. Ringo’s description of what she and her partner did for a living had been intriguing, but Dash wasn’t sure how much of what his nephew had said was fact, and how much was paranoid invention.

Dash had spent most of the day regretting his impulsive call to Skinner. But the quick intelligence in Scully’s eyes, and her aggressive, competent response to possible danger banished his misgivings.

Dash left the yard. “Melvin?” he called softly, not seeing the other man waiting on the path.

“Right here.” A dark piece of the shrubbery detached itself. “I think I heard something down that way.” Frohike pointed toward the spot where the path entered the field surrounding the pond.

“Let’s check.”

The pond was a black space under the moonless sky, ringed with cattails. A thrashing, crashing noise rose and fell as they crossed the field toward the water.

Dash stopped, and whistled. “Gray! Come.” He motioned to Frohike. “Get behind me. And remember, he’s friendly.”

The thrashing stopped, and Dash could see a dark shape heave itself out of the grass and speed toward them. He braced himself for the inevitable impact. With a woof of greeting, Gray rose from the grass to drape his front paws over Dash’s shoulders. Dash turned his head, trying to avoid the sticky tongue and wet nose.

“Damn. My smeller isn’t as dead as I thought it was.” Dash tried to push the wet, stinking dog away. “Down. Gray, down!”

“That’s a dog?” Frohike’s voice was almost a squeak. He had moved away from them to a distance of about ten feet.

“Good boy.” Dash bent to stroke the wet hair out of Gray’s eyes. The dog grinned at him, flashing his nearly 2-inch long canines.

“Are you sure he isn’t what you saw by the bluffs?”

Dash laughed. “Other people have mistaken him for a bear. But he’s small compared to the animal I saw.” The dog was fawning at his feet, rolling over to wave his legs in the air and beg for a belly pet.

“Silly fool.” Dash gave his belly a quick stroke. “At least it wasn’t a porcupine this time.” His fingers brushed over the dog’s chest and shoulder.

Gray rolled away with a whine and a grin, and scooted over to nose around Frohike’s legs.

Dash frowned. Something was wrong with Gray’s shoulder. Underneath the longer, surface coat there had been a bare spot toward the back of the dog’s front right leg.

“Come on, boy. Let’s get you home, and take a look at that leg.”

Gray began to run circles around them, once rushing up to goose Frohike with so much force that he staggered into Dash, cursing.

“He needs to get out more,” Dash laughed. “Chris keeps him penned up, and he’s just too damn big for that. Old bugger keeps escaping, though.”

Frohike recovered his balance and temper. “What’s wrong with his leg? He seems to be moving normally.”

“I felt something, maybe an old injury.” Dash stopped, and Gray came running back toward them. “When we get into the yard, I’m going to try and keep him from grabbing the skunk again. If you could stand in front of it?”

“Jeez.” Frohike began laughing. “So he can knock me over on top of it, and roll on both of us?”

“I’ll try to prevent that, Melvin,” Dash said, enjoying a sudden vision of the scenario drawn as a Far Side-style cartoon. He felt the amusement drain away as they retraced the trail toward the kennel.

There was this bad thing here, on his territory. It had taken someone he’d cared about, and there were so damn few people he cared about. The aftermath of his loss was filled with such a mixture of grief and discovery. It had been years since he’d seen Ringo. The kid had always been his favorite. Strange, geeky and intense about his interests, Dash considered these traits perfectly normal and right for a Langly male.

And this little man with the seedy costume, easy humor, and the night presence of a commando . . . and the small woman with her bright hair and sharp, questioning eyes . . . he wouldn’t have met either of them if this bad thing hadn’t happened.

Life was pretty much a shell game, Dash had decided long ago. The One In Charge was pushing empty walnut-halves around, going _bad thing, good thing, bad thing -- now pick one._

They were nearly there. Dash could see the landscaping lights in Chris’ yard through the trees.

“Gray, come!” Dash motioned for Frohike to go ahead of him. The dog came rushing, groveling in the dirt, pushing against his legs. Dash locked his fingers under Gray’s collar. He could see Frohike standing next to the hole.

“I’m going to put him in the garage.” Gray surged against the restraint, but he allowed Dash to tug him toward the house.

The side door to the garage was unlocked, and Dash pushed Gray through ahead of him. The dog immediately began barking. Dash stepped inside, shut the door, and groped for the overhead light.

Gray rolled on the concrete floor, barking with mindless dog happiness. Anticipating some treat for his good behavior, Dash thought wryly. The door to the house opened and the garage light went on.

“What the hell is going on out here?” Chris stood in the doorway clutching a rolling pin. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt, her short white hair spiking around her forehead. Her nose wrinkled, and she began to cough and back out of the garage. “Put him outside Dash, for god’s sake! What have you two been doing?”

“He tunneled out of the kennel. I have to fill it in before he can go back.” Dash wished the old woman would just adopt a couple of cats and let him take Gray. “You know he gets squirrelly this time of year. You need to walk him more often.”

“Like that would help.”

Dash shook his head. She’d retreated behind the door, observing her dog with one eye through an inch-wide crack. “Let me have him, Chris. How’d he get hurt, anyway?”

“Hurt? You mean his leg?” She opened the door a little more. “I don’t know. He limped around for a few days, but he wouldn’t let me look at it.”

“I would have taken him to the vet in Manitou.” Dash knelt beside the dog and began to work the thick fur with his fingers. “You’re a fine boy, Gray. Good dog.” His fingers found the spot he was looking for, and Gray flinched and whined. “Steady. Steady. I just want to look, you great slobbering thing.”

Gray rolled his eyes back, and grinned, his tongue flickering in and out over his lips to touch the cool cement floor. Dash moved the fur away from the misshapen spot on Gray’s leg. There was new flesh here, glossy pink and black, without fur to protect it. The injury was shaped like a fat half moon, about 2-inches long, and seemed sunken below the surrounding meat and muscle by almost half an inch.

Dash stared at the texture of the wound, and his chest tightened. He began to cough as he stood and went to find the garden shovel.


	5. Chapter 5

**7:00 a.m. - Friday**

“Ringo. Get your ass out of bed.”

Someone was shaking him. Langly grunted and tried to bury his head under the pillow. Phantom images of bikini-clad beach babes and an oversized innertube lingered, then dissolved as he reluctantly opened one eye.

“Dash. What time is it?”

“Time to get out of bed and shower. When you’re done, come down and help me make breakfast.” Dash pulled the window blinds fully open. Bright morning sun filtered past the tree branches that crowded against the window. Small specks seemed to be drifting along the light like a stream that ended in a puddle of brightness on the foot of Langly’s bed.

Dash sneezed three times, explosively. “Dust. Pollen. Mold.” He sneezed again. “I feel better when I can’t see it.”

“I waited until a little after one.” Langly sat up and yawned. “I remember you woke me up and told me to come up here. Did you get the dog in his kennel?”

“We did. Now, get moving. And you’d better hurry if you want hot water. I’m going to wake agent Scully up next. Women can make demands on a hot water heater.”

Langly showered quickly, then found a fresh t-shirt in his bag. He sniffed his jeans cautiously. *Good for one more day,* he decided.

The strong odor of fresh coffee lurked in the stair well. Langly followed the smell, and the sound of voices, down the stairs then back toward the kitchen. Frohike was already seated at the round oak table that sat in front of a pair of patio doors.

Dash stood by the bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room, measuring flour into a mixing bowl.

“Pancakes?” Langly felt saliva begin to pool around his tongue. “Pineapple?”

Dash grinned, and waved a spoon at the stove. “You fry bacon, I’ll flip cakes.”

They were taking a breather after demolishing the first plate of pancakes when Scully finally appeared. Frohike whistled appreciatively at her blue jeans.

Her butt wasn't not bad, Langly thought, watching the denim-encased area in question as Scully poured herself coffee at the counter. And her shirt. Holy hooters ... he wondered what kind of bra she had under the tank. He wrenched his eyes away from Scully’s cleavage, hoping she hadn’t caught him staring.

Dash cleared the spot where he’d been sitting. “Park it here, I’ll make more cakes. Plain or pineapple, Dana?”

“Pineapple?” Scully stared at their empty plates. “I’ll try pineapple.”

“We left you some bacon.” Frohike pointed at the two strips that still sat like sun-dried caterpillars in the middle of a greasy napkin.

“No thank you.” Scully said.

Langly saw her smile as he and Frohike each grabbed a piece. “It’s the country air. I’m hungry this morning.”

So was Scully, it seemed. She ate three of Dash’s pancakes.

Langly drank orange juice while she ate, and Frohike got up to help Dash tidy the kitchen. Langly watched them work with interest. No conversation passed between them, but it almost looked like each move in the kitchen was choreographed, executed according to some plan. Back home Frohike could never work in the kitchen with Byers, or vice versa. One could cook, one could clean, but two in the same space meant squabbling.

Langly felt his throat constrict with the next gulp of juice. It was a revelation. Frohike had always reminded him of Dash. Although physically dissimilar, Frohike’s talents, interests and attitudes revealed him as a man who came from the same forge that had marked his uncle.

“More coffee?” Dash filled the cups around the table. “Leave the rest, Melvin. Sit down.”

“The pancakes were great.” Scully pulled at her belt. “You were telling me a story last night, Dash. Is there more to it? I need to know why I’m here, what you expect us to accomplish.”

“You solve freaky mysteries, don’t you?” Dash grimaced. “Okay. Where’d we leave off last night?”

“You were telling us about Gwen,” Scully said.

Dash cleared his throat. “Yeah. Gwen always did a lot of camping. She liked to get close to the land, away from people, to try and focus herself to dream. But that night she was trying for a specific dream. She was trying to find the mind of the thing I had described seeing near the bluffs.”

“She wasn’t bitten, was she? Like Harry?” Langly asked.

“No. But it doesn’t make sense, as seasoned as she was in woodcraft, that she would have been trapped in that fire.” Dash pushed back from the table and began to pace. “I know accidents happen, but it feels wrong. If she had been scared, and running like Harry was ... then I can see her blundering into a bad spot.”

“Do you think her dreaming ability had anything to do with her death, or that the creature you saw had any part in what happened?” Scully asked.

“I just don’t know.” Dash pushed open the patio doors, and the smell of fresh cut grass momentarily overwhelmed the bacon and coffee atmosphere around the table. “I think something panicked her.”

“Tell her about Gray,” Frohike suggested.

Dash sat down at the table and reached for the coffee pot. “Gray’s been bitten.”

A bright beam of sun turned Scully’s hair to an incandescent red-orange-yellow. Langly watched her face as she listened to Dash explain the dog’s injury. She was gathering the pieces and evaluating the puzzle. Scully the Detector has arrived, Langly thought, swallowing a snort of laughter. It wasn’t a bad mental image, Scully with her hair slicked back, wearing a peek-a-boo jumpsuit and heels.

He and Frohike could wear gargoyle suits next Halloween. Minions of Scully the Detector. Might win a prize, especially if we could talk her into . . .

Langly pulled himself back to reality.

“. . . Darke was gone again last night,” Dash was saying. “Not that there aren’t other Macabre residents that do strange things after nightfall. Nude volleyball, druidic rituals and punch, and poetry recitals at the boulder crescent are some that come to mind immediately.”

“Eww.” Frohike made a face. “Punch.”

Dash laughed, and his face seemed to settle into more peaceful lines. “Darke is the only one whose behavior seems unexplainable, yet purposeful. The circles have gradually widened, but only slightly. He’s staying away from the bluffs.”

Scully tapped one finger absently on the handle of her spoon. She took a deep breath.

“Okay. Here’s what we do this morning. I’m going into Manitou and talk to the police and the medical examiner. Frohike, you can come with me.” Scully picked up her breakfast things and carried them into the kitchen. “Dash, why don’t you take Langly out for a walk near where you found the skull, and saw the creature.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Dash said. “When you get back, I’ll take you on the grand tour of Macabre.”


	6. Chapter 6

**(BITS - 1969)**

 _Holy Moses, I have been removed,  
I have seen the spectre, he has been here too.  
Distant cousin from down the line  
Brand of people who ain’t my kind  
Holy Moses, I have been removed._

 _Border Song - Bernie Taupin_

 

Maybe it was allergies, after all.

Langly followed Dash through the trails behind the house, onto a dirt two-track. His uncle was moving with long, loose strides, and hadn’t coughed since they’d left the house.

“What do you see?” Dash slowed so Langly could walk next to him. “When’s the last time we took a walk together?”

“Jeez. Fifteen years?” Langly tried to keep his feet from finding every tree root and wash hole in his path. He scanned the forest around them. “It looks -- funny,” he said finally. “But I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong. It looks kinda bare, I guess.”

Dash shook his head. “Good eye. They had a huge herd of deer out here. Exotics, not the local variety. Antelope, gazelle, and a couple of fancy goat breeds. They let llamas roam around up on the north side. It’s even worse there.”

“You’re talking about the animals they kept here nearly seventeen years ago?” Langly asked, surprised.

“You should have seen this place when I moved in.” Dash reached down and stroked the top of a fern. “It looked like an African plain. You’ve got a couple of inches of topsoil here, then sand. Not a lot to graze on, and some of the native plants were very fragile. A fire would have done less damage, in many ways.”

“What did they do with the animals?”

“Zoos, private hunting ranches. Most of the llamas died. It turns out our native deer can carry and pass brain worm to llamas.”

Light filtered through the trees, touching the forest floor with dappled yellow light. A breeze kept the trees in constant motion, and carried earthy odors of rotting tree bark and sun-heated foliage.

“You like it here.” Langly took deep lungfuls of the air. “It’s like a hideout.”

“That’s harsh,” Dash said, twisting his moustache. “It’s a life, Ringo. The location may be sheltered and out of the mainstream, but it’s not a hideout.”

Langly caught the half-wink and sound of mocking amusement in his uncle’s voice. “CyberMerc seems to be doing well.” Langly had seen copies on sale at the little comics den he browsed through a couple of times a month. “They sell it in D.C., and say they can’t get enough copies to meet demand.”

They walked through the forest in silence for several minutes.

“I’m having trouble with the stories, now.” Dash stared straight down the trail. His words seemed casual. “It took me nearly 20 years to admit this to myself. I’d been so afraid I might have to be in a combat situation again someday. I fought my fear and uncertainties through CyberMerc. So when I woke up one morning in Macabre, and I realized the fear had dissipated into acceptance . . . well, the stories began to fade as well.”

“Frohike says tormented artists produce the most powerful work,” Langly said, desperately searching for some appropriate response.

He’d been about 12, attending Memorial Day ceremonies with his family. Dash had stood at attention in uniform, while the guns fired salute. Langly the boy had thought the noise was cool; Langly the man recalled his uncle’s face and eyes. The darkness that had changed Dash’s face into a stranger’s had been fear.

“Then I guess I’m going to settle for competent work,” Dash laughed. “I’ve given torment all the time it deserves.”

Langly stopped to pick a stone out of his shoe. “You know, ten years ago I didn’t understand about the fear.”

The trail climbed a series of earthen folds that just missed hill status. The sides of the trail were cut down to the sand with lines of water erosion, branching grooves in the dirt that seemed to mimic the ribbing on the oak leaves overhead.

“What have you been keeping to yourself? I notice, you know. When you went to live with those two, you started to edit what you wrote to me.” Dash paused as they reached a level portion of the trail. “I’ve been worried.”

Langly had known this conversation with Dash was inevitable. There had been nights spent talking with Byers and Frohike when they’d all agonized over the amount of information they should pass on to the handful of people in their lives who really mattered. Too much information might kill more surely than too little, they’d decided.

The hardwoods disappeared, and pines crowded thickly against the rocky, ascending trail. Langly found himself working to keep up with Dash.

“Sitting on my can in front a computer is starting to take its toll.” Sweat beaded along the back of his neck, trickled down his shoulder blades. “What would you say if I told you there were ETs among us, planning to colonize earth?”

Dash stopped walking and turned around to look into Langly’s eyes. “Shit, Ringo. I’d say buy a house in Macabre and join the other fantasists. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Deadly.”

“Then tell me.”

Langly started with Suzanne Modeski and worked his way through abductions, clones and implants. Dash never stopped walking as he listened.

“Agent Scully was abducted?” Dash was shaking his head in wonder. “No wonder the monster didn’t seem to bother her.”

“She’s been through shit that would turn your hair completely white. I don’t know how she’s kept it together.” His own nightmares since Vegas, phantasmagoric images plucked from old science fiction movies turning him into a robot controlled by some spider-spawn-alien . . .

Langly found he couldn’t tell Dash about waking with the shudders, fearful he’d killed Frohike and Byers as he slept. How did Scully cope with the trespasses against her body and soul? Langly realized he wished he could find the courage to ask her that question.

The path disappeared as they stood at last on a rock shelf. Langly walked to the edge and kicked a stone over the 10-foot drop. It skipped and rattled down the steep tumble of exposed stones and dirt farther below.

Dash sat on a picnic table-sized rock and stared at the sweep of land.

Below the steep bluff faces spread an uneven circular area of dark, lush greens. Crowded clusters of short bushes hid most of the ground, but occasional gaps revealed the shine of sun off water. Bleached skeletons of long-dead pine trees stood like masts of ancient wrecks. In the distance, against the horizon, the blue-green hardwood forest rose again in undulating hills.

“I don’t get it, Ringo. If these things are true, why aren’t you telling people.” Dash pointed upward at the bird circling above the swamp. “Bald eagle. They’ve come back.”

The bird began dropping toward one of the tree skeletons. Langly felt his chest tighten. “Who would believe us, man? Our own government is in on the fix. People most likely to believe us, and have resources to help in any resistance, are also most likely to get whacked if they become players.

“We’ve been betrayed by friends. Some of us have been betrayed by family,” Langly thought of the hours they’d spent on the snoop checks of their friends and business acquaintances since the Vegas trip. “This is a guerrilla war right now.”

“You haven’t been whacked.”

“I’ve come closer than I like thinking about. We know we’re on somebody’s short list.” Langly met his uncle’s steady gaze, and knew his message had been understood and accepted.

The explosive tat-tat-tat of beak against wood announced the presence of a woodpecker. Langly jumped reflexively, and swore under his breath.

Dash slid off the rock, unstartled. “We’re all on a short list, Ringo.” He pointed to the north. “I haven’t been through that area yet.”

The sun was hot, baking the earth they walked. It was rough going, a maze of rock, brush piles and scraggly bushes. After an hour of scrambling over sharp and pointy obstacles Langly was sweating, his glasses sliding down to the end of his nose.

“Drink of water?” Dash unslung the canteen from under his arm.

Langly took a swallow. The water was canteen flavored, and warm, but refreshing. He handed the canteen back to Dash and wiped the sweat from his face with the hem of his t-shirt.

“Where’d you find the skull?”

Dash took a long drink. “Not that far from here. Ready to walk some more?”

“Sure.” Langly felt his nose throbbing, and suspected he would be burned by the time they returned to the forest. His foot slipped on a loose stone as he followed Dash, and he went down on one knee. “Mother --”

There would be bruises on his legs to add to his sunburn.

“You okay?” Dash was ahead, standing on top of a boulder, laughing at him.

“Yeah.” Langly got to his feet. He saw Dash turn and survey the area from his vantage point, shading his eyes against the sun.

“Down there.” Dash jumped off his perch and vanished from sight.

Langly worked his way around the boulders, through a bush that seemed to have thistle-like spikes on every branch. He found Dash kneeling next to a hole between two rocks.

“It’s a hole.” Damn, his jeans were full of stickers. Langly began picking the burrs off, and found they were as willing to stick into his fingers as his jeans.

“Could be a den.” Dash frowned, running his fingers over the top of the hole. “Too small for what I saw. The entrance is only about two feet wide. This is weird.”

“What?” Langly gave up on the stickers. He squatted beside Dash, and felt tiny spikes rasp against his legs.

“The way the rock is weathered. The lower edge is rough and grainy, but the upper edge is smooth.” Dash stuck his hand into the hole past the elbow, and felt around the deeper circumference. “It’s the same in farther. Smooth on the top arc, rough on the bottom.”

“It looks like it might be deep.” Langly picked up a fist-sized rock and rolled it over the edge of the hole. Stones skittered and they could hear a short hiss of dislodged sand raining through the opening.

Dash shook his head. “I couldn’t tell if it stopped, or kept falling.” He stood and looked around the area, taking his bearings. “We’ll walk north. We should come out near the washout where I found the skull. Jeff has video equipment. We’ll come back with the camera.”

The washout was a field of rock and debris strewn around a Paul Bunyan-sized pine that looked as if it were growing in the wrong direction, roots toward the sky, peak buried in the dirt.

“It used to stand at the edge of the bluffs. It finally gave in to erosion and old-age.” Dash gestured toward the top of the slope. “It took a big chunk of land out when it teetered over.”

It was amazing that Dash had found the skull in the mess. Langly tried to methodically search the area on the slope near the tree roots. Stone and rock dislodged and slid from under his feet with every step. After losing his balance for a second time, Langly decided he’d looked long enough.

“Ready to go back?” Dash met him near the top of the tree at the bottom of the slope. “I don’t see anything new.”

“I’m ready. I’m sunburned, abraded and itching,” Langly laughed at Dash as a swell of affection and nostalgia washed away the discomfort. “Just like old times.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Noon - Friday**

The boy believed the things he’d said, Dash had no doubt. Science fact-stranger-than-fiction had come to Macabre.

He watched Ringo drinking lemonade as they sat on the porch and waited for the others to return. He’d have to quit thinking of him as “the boy.” There was a wariness and expectancy in his nephew’s eyes that Dash had seen in older men who’d been through bad places.

It was a family trait, Dash mused, for the Langly men to come late to maturity. In spite of what women in general, and settled family members in particular, said about the inability to sustain a relationship or contribute in a productive way to society -- well, Dash considered his early attempt at these social responsibilities as a dismal failure partly due to an unavoidable immaturity.

Realization of his own belated coming-of-age had been Gwen’s gift to him.

He wanted to talk to Ringo about her, Dash realized. Even at the community ceremony for Harry and Gwen, he hadn’t spoken of his relationship with his quirky, generous friend.

The faint rumble of a car motor filtered through the woods, then died away. Dash got to his feet.

“They’re back.” He leaned against a porch support and watched until Scully appeared. She was walking at a pace that looked as if she might break into a sprint at any moment. Frohike followed close behind, almost jogging to keep up with her. Scully’s face was neutral. She smiled with polite reserve as she came up the steps.

“Did you find your way around in Manitou?” Dash saw a flicker of what looked like irritation mar Scully’s facade.

“Yes.”

She pushed her hair away from her face, and Dash could see the sheen of sweat on her forehead.

“Come back to the kitchen, I’ll get you both a cold drink. Then we’ll drive around Macabre.”

They drank glasses of lemonade and water in the kitchen, then followed him out the back door to the garage.

“I hope she starts.” Dash pressed the garage door button. “I only drive her every other month or so.” He got into the driver’s seat, and motioned Scully into the front with him. The old station wagon hacked once, then turned over. Dash backed the wagon out of the garage, then down the short drive to a two-track trail behind the house.

“We’ll have lunch at the cafe, and you can tell me what you found in Manitou.” Dash turned onto a wider gravel road. “Macabre had 70 residents. We’re down to 68.” They cruised past several log houses. “Out of the 68 there are a couple of names most outsiders recognize right away. Sally Grue lives there.”

“Who?” Scully turned to stare at the gem-like sparkle of mullioned windows in the house they were passing.

“What do you read, Scully?” Frohike shook his head. “Even I know who Sally Grue is. The “Scared Silly” series of kid’s novels.”

“Like the television show?”

The distaste in her question was obvious. Dash laughed. “Didn’t you ever read Nancy Drew when you were a kid, Rocket? Sally’s just the 90s version -- with a little Scooby Doo stuff thrown into the mix. He’s a nice guy, no pretensions.”

“Sally’s a man? I didn’t know that. Who else would we recognize?” Ringo had rolled down his window and was hanging out like an eager spaniel scenting the air.

“Damien Queene. He’s on the south side near the theater. It’s convenient for his pre-publication parties.”

Scully still looked perplexed. “The name sounds familiar.”

Frohike made a rude noise. “Tell me you could get on an elevator or sit in a restaurant last fall without having to listen to a rehash of _Let’s Do Dinner_. It was on the best-seller list for about eight months.”

“I remember. And now they’re making a movie. I saw Queene on Good Morning, America. He was being humble and offering get well wishes to Stephen King,” Scully recalled. “It was all sex and murder, wasn’t it? Mulder went on about it, too.”

“You don’t plan to read the novel?” Dash let the car creep to the top of a hill. “It’s about a woman whose husband cheats on her once too often. The wife engineers a meeting with the latest girlfriend, invites her to dinner and seduces her. Afterward the girlfriend learns the rump roast they had for dinner was contributed by her lover.”

Scully wrinkled her nose. “No wonder Mulder liked it.” She leaned forward as they reached the hill’s crest. “It’s amazing,” she said.

Commercial Macabre sat below, nestled in a natural hollow between the forested hills. The log buildings looked red-gold in the bright noon sun.

“It’s kind of an idealized logging town with Victorian touches,” Dash said, amused to realize how much of a sense of community this odd place had given him. “The poor jerk who designed it had a romantic obsession with the past. That’s the fulfillment center at the north end. The magazine is mailed from there, along with books, tapes, posters and any other merchandise they’ve come up with. They’ve got a full-time staff, and every resident of Macabre has to contribute one day’s work every other week.”

Dash let the car nose over the hill and down the slope. “On the south end is Huxley Theater. Interesting place. They’ve been producing short films to show in there for the last several years, and they’re working on a feature-length masterpiece. You don’t read popular novels, how about the classics?”

Scully frowned. “If you’re talking about _Brave New World_ , I read it in high school,” she said. “I don’t remember much about it.”

“The theater was originally called Gaia’s Window. It was designed to show a series of nature-themed films extolling the virtues of living in harmony with the earth and her creatures. It’s got a sophisticated sprinkling system, air ducts, speakers and hydraulic lifts under the seats. They wanted an audience to experience the sights, sounds, smells and atmospheric disturbances of different environments.”

The road changed to blacktop. They cruised past the general store just as Chris stepped onto the sidewalk, arms full of groceries. She nodded, and Dash waved. Her new Honda was parked around the corner, and he could see Gray sitting upright behind the steering wheel. Probably slobbering on the shift-stick, Dash thought with a grin.

“Kind of like a drive-in without the car?” Frohike asked.

“In the beginning.” Dash pulled the car into a parking space in front of the cafe. “When MacKenzie bought the place, the theater became one of his favorite toys. He continued producing weather-themed films for a while. They added freezers so they could blow snow on the audience, added a chemist to the community so they could synthesize the smell of everything from peaches to roadkill. When they replaced the original seats with liquid-filled, virtual reality stations, and I heard them discussing pheromones, I decided my movie-going days here were over.”

“Wow. Can we get in?” Ringo pulled his head back into the car, eyes bright behind his thick lenses.

“We’ll check to see what’s playing. No promises.”

The cafe was nearly empty. Dash spotted Jeff as they stepped out of the foyer in the direction of the cash register.

“Good man. Jeff’s got the back booth.” Dash waved at the waitress, who was pouring coffee at another table. They were in luck, it was Rita, the dedicated eyes and ears of Macabre’s rumor machine.

“Nice decor.” Scully was directly behind him as they walked to the booth. “Red leather, lots of green glass and gilding. What does the ‘W&W’ stand for? If this place was a trivia game, I’d have the low score.”

“Wells and Welles.” Dash reached over the booth’s top to grab Jeff’s hand. “May we join you?” he asked. “This is my nephew, Ringo; Dana Scully, and Ringo’s friend Melvin Frohike.”

“Glad to meet you. I was going to stop by later.” Jeff slid around to the center of the u-curve. “They want you to do something for next month’s cover.”

“Shit. Harry was supposed to do that one. Didn’t they find anything he’d been planning to submit?” Dash sat next to Jeff, and Scully sat on his left, perched on the corner of the booth seat facing Frohike.

“Estate problems. Turns out Harry had some family. I heard they’ve made the company an offer, but nothing’s been settled,” Jeff said.

Rita wandered over with menus and the coffee pot, and they ordered lunch.

“Did you bond with Police Chief Lander?” Dash turned his head so he could watch Scully’s profile.

Frohike whistled suggestively. “He was willing.”

“Chief Lander was very helpful.”

Scully glared at Frohike, and Dash saw the self-satisfied twinkle in the older man’s eyes. It was his way of getting her attention, a game they both liked to play, Dash realized.

“Both reports are essentially what you had already told me. Both cases are considered closed.” Scully drank some of her ice water, sucked in an ice cube and cracked it between her teeth. “You didn’t mention both bodies had already been cremated.”

“I didn’t realized they cremated Harry.” Dash saw Jeff nod.

“The medical examiner told me a slightly different story about the condition of Harry’s body. I saw photos of the bite on Harry’s arm, Dash. The flesh appeared to have been gouged by both tooth and claw.”

“No way.” Jeff said vehemently, shaking his head. “I was there, too. The area around the missing meat was glassy smooth. What about the t-shirt? Was that in the picture?”

“I asked about the shirt. Dr. Bernard said he was wearing a tank shirt, not a t-shirt, when he was brought in.”

Dash saw Scully’s eyes casually move from Jeff’s face to his own. Watching to see how they would react, Dash knew. He quelled his own startled protest, and considered what her information might mean.

“You left to find the nearest phone and notify the police.” Dash could see from Jeff’s expression that his mind was racing over the events of the morning they’d found Harry. “I walked around up top for about 40 minutes. I heard voices coming back. You’d already returned, and you were talking to deputy Zell. When I joined you, we moved away from the body, but I’m sure Harry was still wearing the t-shirt then.”

“I agree.” Jeff nodded. “Zell sent us back to wait for the others to show up.”

“Zell hunts out here, so he knows his way around,” Dash explained. “The rest of the circus needed a guide.”

“They questioned us while the pictures were taken and the body bagged,” Jeff said. “I didn’t get another close look at Harry after we came back. I can talk to Zell, if you want. He’s comfortable with me.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Dash leaned back and smiled as Rita returned with their food. “Looks good. What’s the down and dirty today?”

Rita’s face transformed from professional boredom to the gleeful naughtiness of the avid gossip. “Heard about Harry’s family, and his will?” She dealt out the plates quickly.

“I heard someone was taking possession of his stuff,” Jeff said. “Nothing about a will, though.”

“Harry left all his work and computer equipment to Bill Darke.” Rita stepped back, obviously enjoying the chance to spread the news. “You did know he and Harry were --”

Dash held up his hand. “Spare us, Rita.”

“I thought that was just talk.” Jeff grabbed his sandwich and began chewing. “You know how people love to gossip about sex around here,” he mumbled.

“They used to sit in here. Harry was always explaining things about his art to Darke. And Darke listened with that totally absorbed expression I see in couples who’ve just started dating.” Rita sniffed and shrugged. “The way you look at Tilda Mayhew, Jeff.”

“You finally let her catch up with you?” Dash laughed at his friend’s grimace. “When did it start between Harry and Darke? You don’t see him around that much. He does his volunteer time at night.”

“I think they both really liked to watch the sensorama shows,” Rita said. “Over and over. I don’t get it, myself. They’re pretty boring after the novelty wears off. At first they’d stop in separately for a coffee after the show. Then they started sitting together and talking.”

“How’d you get from talking to dating?” Jeff asked. “They start to hold hands?”

Rita took a moment to give Jeff a look that would have withered a more sensitive man. “It was the way they smiled at each other. I knew. You guys want anything else right now?”

“No thanks,” Dash said.

Rita began to turn away, throwing a final few words at her audience. “Harry left his most precious belongings to a man he’d known for less then a year, and wasn’t a relative. Explain that.”

They finished eating without conversation. When Rita returned with more coffee, and an offer of dessert, Jeff and Frohike ordered pie.

Dash felt his feet itch as he waited for them to finish.

“Tell them about the hole up on the bluffs.” Ringo cleaned his glasses on a napkin. Dash could feel his leg jiggling up and down under the table with an impatience similar to his own.

“We’ll need your camera equipment, Jeff.” Dash described the peculiar features of the rock around the hole. “I doubt that it has anything to do with the creature I saw, but it’s the only extraordinary thing I’ve found out there so far.” He looked around the table. Scully was folding and refolding her napkin absentmindedly. “What is it, agent?”

“I’m trying to put it together, Dash. What are we looking for, a man, an animal, a monster? Why would the wound on Harry’s body have been altered? If it was inflicted by an animal, where did the t-shirt go? If someone was trying to hide the nature of the wound, that explains the absence of the t-shirt, but still gives no clue to what might have originally inflicted the wound.” Scully began to tear the napkin into small pieces. “You’re thinking whoever defaced the wound knows what did it.”

“And I admit that Darke is the only suspect on my list,” Dash said. “He feels wrong. His behavior feels wrong.”

“Feels wrong.” Scully stared at his face as though memorizing every age line, every grizzled beard hair. “Did I do something, in a previous life, that caused me to be fated to spend so much of this life with intuitive men?”

 _I get the strong sense that I’ve known you before. In a previous life._

The vision of Gwen’s smiling face invaded Dash’s mind’s eye with an accompanying surge of loss, as he recalled the first words she’d said to him when they’d met.

“Gwen would have found that quite probable,” Dash rasped. He cleared the thickness from his throat. “I don’t spend time agonizing over the unknowable, agent.”

Scully slid out of the booth. “I can take a hint. Let’s finish your tour of Macabre.”


	8. Chapter 8

**(BITS: circa 1972)**

 _I’m an alligator  
I’m a momma-poppa coming for you  
I’m a space invader ..._

 _Moonage Daydream, David Bowie_

 _The creature picked up one of its toys at random, and took a small taste._

 _It was restless; the place of deep sleep no longer called. But the playground had changed too much, and the air was heavy with the stink of things that moved as if alive, yet were not._

 _The nearly familiar tastings revived some of the older knowing, and stirred suppressed yearnings. It had been a good game, but a gamesplayer was waiting. It was time to return to the Place where it Belonged._

 

Jeff’s house was on the other side of Macabre’s commercial center, the middle house in a loop called Kubrick Circle. Dash followed Jeff inside while Langly, Scully and Frohike sat in the station wagon and waited.

It was hot in the car. Scully fanned herself by pulling at the front of her shirt. She’d been quiet during the rest of the tour, sitting next to Dash in the front seat, listening attentively to his uncle’s explanation of how the distribution center worked, and Jeff’s lurid story about the last pre-publication party in the theater.

“If it is a monster, what are we going to do about it?” Langly asked, watching the Scully’s shirt alternately billow around, then cling to, her chest. “Shoot it?”

“I haven’t had good luck shooting monsters,” Scully said, shaking her head. “Running away is usually a better idea.”

“Run away, run away.” Langly was unable to hold back his snort of laughter. He saw Scully’s head half turn, a quick smile lifting her lips, and he rapidly shifted the focus of his eyes to the house. “All the time Dash has been showing us this place -- well, it really makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it?”

“Huh?” Frohike stared at him.

“Carried off by a fantod.” Scully said, her smile fading. “I suppose you think it says something about me, that I’m still running around with Mulder chasing phantoms and freaks.”

“Yeah. I do.” Langly said, remembering his conversation with Mulder over Scully’s last birthday present. “I told him to quit giving you things he wanted to buy for himself. I never imagined you’d read it,” Langly said, and saw the smile come back to her face.

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Frohike demanded.

“The pornographic couch,” Scully said, shutting her eyes again. “Coming to a bad end.”

Langly felt the air explode in his nasal passages, and heard the noise he was making. He tried to hold in the laughter without success. What made the whole conversation funnier was the fact that there’d been a time when he’d thought of Scully as basically humorless. There’d been a time when he hadn’t had a clue that funny, sexy party-girl Scully existed. Their last trip to Vegas had been a fiasco, but an eye-opening fiasco, Langly thought.

“Mulder . . . gave her . . . Edward . . . Gorey.” Langley managed to choke out between snorts, and he saw understanding come to Frohike.

“You’re a closet cartoon reader, Scully?” Frohike shook his head. “I still don’t understand what you meant about this all making sense.”

“Like finds like,” Scully said. “All these people, coming to live here, sharing an obsession with the imagination. It’s a pattern Mulder and I have seen more times than I want to think about: a weird group of people with weird problems.”

“Weird. That doesn’t sound very scientific, Scully,” Frohike said.

“There’s always an explanation,” Scully said, “we just don’t have the scientific language necessary to accurately describe some of the stuff we’ve seen.”

Langly’s giggles were nearly under control when Dash and Jeff returned the station wagon, carrying canvas and leather bags.

“We drive around the far side of the bluffs, and walk in from the back. It’s shorter that way,” Dash called in as he stacked the bags in the back of the wagon.

“What’s in the bags?” Langly asked Jeff as they bumped over a narrow two-track road.

“Itsy Bitsy.” Jeff glanced back at the collection behind their seat. “This should be a good field test. It’s a roving camera system. You ever see documentary on how they looked at the inside of some of the pyramid shafts?”

Langly shook his head, but Frohike nodded.

“Little radio controlled deal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It got me thinking about trying to do the same thing in more challenging spaces.” Jeff patted the nearest bag, pride evident in his voice. “I’ve got patents pending on this baby.”

 

It was only a short drive. Dash parked the wagon just off the two-track, and they each shouldered one of the bags. Langly saw Dash glance at his watch and look at the sky, then look at Jeff.

“Rain,” Jeff said, nodding. “I smell it too. Around dusk, probably.”

The wind gusted as they walked, the sky changing color as clouds covered the sun. Yellow daylight bleached to a diffuse, pearly color. It took them a little over a half-hour to get back to the rocky place where they’d found the hole.

Jeff took the bags and arranged in them in some order, then began to unpack their contents. Langly watched in fascination as Jeff hooked a custom-made monitor into a laptop and booted up.

“Too cool,” Langly’s fingers were itching as Jeff rummaged in the last bag. “Where’s the camera?”

“Here.” Jeff held up something that looked like a child’s toy. “Itsy Bitsy.” He placed the thing on top of the monitor, and went to work at the computer.

It looked like a disco ball inside of a round, oversized filigree Christmas ornament, Langly thought. He watched Jeff hook a fiber optic tether through the cage into an elaborate-looking screw fitting in the disco ball.

“Okay. Let’s see what she sees.” Jeff touched a key, and the monitor fractured into six segments.

Langly could see himself on the screen, looking at the screen. Jeff and Dash were next to him, Scully and Frohike were in the upper right corner, the rocks behind them were on the lower left, and finally, two views of the ground beyond Frohike’s feet.

“It’s like spider eyes,” Langly said, impressed by the cleverness of the design.

“I hope she fits down the hole okay.” Jeff typed a command, and with a metallic click eight jointed, rubbery-looking appendages popped out of the disco ball. Itsy Bitsy gave a lurch, bounced slightly as it hit the ground, then began to roll toward the hole.

“I’ll bet you played with Legos,” Langly said as the camera paused on the edge of the hole, began to glow, then rolled over the edge into the darkness below. He desperately wanted to explore the delicate interior workings of the gadget.

They clustered around in back of Jeff, watching the monitor, six screens full of images of the black rock on the sides of the hole. It was apparent that the anomaly of rough floor and smooth ceiling continued past the mouth of the hole.

“She’s down about 10 feet now,” Jeff said, pointing at a complicated readout on the laptop’s main screen. “And she’s found a drop ahead. We’ve got an echo.” Jeff’s fingers flew furiously over his keyboard. “If everything’s working, it’s a six-foot drop. She can do six feet.”

“We need one of these,” Langly elbowed Frohike, who was standing next to him. “Think of the possibilities.”

There was a low rumble from far in the distance, and Jeff looked up at the darkening sky. “I’m weatherproofed to some extent, but I’d rather not be set up when the rain hits. I’ve only got two prototypes.”

The tether hissed as it fed out several feet in a swift jerk. “She’s down!” Jeff’s voice sounded proud and excited. “Good girl!”

The monotonous images were suddenly wildly varied, and confusing.

“What is all that stuff?” Scully asked, pushing in front of Langly to point at one of the screens. “Am I looking at a wrist watch?”

“And a Campbell’s soup can? And an ax head? And lots of bones.”

“Composite,” Jeff said, typing again. The six individual screens shrank, merged, then expanded. The resulting picture was so strange that no one spoke for almost a minute.

“It looks like a junk yard built on the elephant’s graveyard,” Dash said finally. “What’s the size of the cave?”

“About twelve by twelve,” Jeff said. “I’ve got it recorded. I’m going to pull her in and get packed up before it starts raining.” He touched a key, and the tether began to slowly rewind. On the screen the cave floor darkened as Itsy Bitsy’s lights retreated upward.

“Jeff.” Scully saw it first. “Stop her a minute. What’s that -- to the far right of the screen. I saw a spark, or a glow.”

“Maybe whatever animal’s been packratting stuff is still down there,” Frohike said.

“Packrats don’t carry away ax heads,” Dash said.

Langly heard the flat sound in Dash’s voice. Something was wrong, he thought, straining to see what Scully had seen on the screen.

Movement. Shadow coalescing. Red eyes in a fuzzy sketch of animal face.

The picture disappeared as the tether began to retract with a whine. Jeff and Dash were both swearing.

“Was that what you saw?” Scully asked. “There must be another entrance somewhere.”

Itsy Bitsy bounced out of the hole and rolled toward Jeff.

“Help me.” Jeff was shutting down the laptop. “Disconnect the monitor and pack everything up. Fast.”

“It’s not coming out of that hole,” Frohike said. “It couldn’t possibly fit. Are there any other caves nearby?”

Jeff and Dash exchanged looks. “We looked. We didn’t find any,” Dash said, zipping the last bag closed and hoisting it onto his shoulder. “I knew we should have brought the rifles.”

“Run away,” Langly said, faintly. The thunder rolled again, and had barely died away to a grumbling vibration when a closer, louder noise echoed around the rocks. The extended howl brought goosebumps to Langly’s arms.

“Nameless son-of-a-bitch.” Dash stopped dead in the path. “She let him get out again. He’s headed this way.”

“Gray,” Frohike said. “He’s hunting?”

“Hunting something.” Dash whistled several times, then continued walking rapidly back toward the car.

“The sky,” Scully said. “I’ve seen a sky like that before.”

Langly glanced up at the boiling gray clouds that spilled toward them from the horizon. Scully’s voice had been almost fearful. He turned to look at her and saw her eyes were aimed upward with a disturbing, vacant expression that made her momentarily a stranger.

“Keep moving!” Jeff ordered from behind Scully.

Langly hurried to catch up with Dash. A new volley of barking sounded, closer than the first.

“He’s close,” Dash called back over his shoulder.

When they found Gray, he was crouched on the rocky ground near a stand of white pine, snarling at William Darke.

“Gray.” Dash lowered his bag to the ground and stepped slowly toward the dog. “What’d you do to piss him off?” he asked Darke, bluntly.

“It’s not me.” Darke smiled.

He wasn't afraid of the dog. Langly could see it in the man’s eyes, in the way his mouth moved when he spoke. Darke stood facing Gray without looking at him.

“Then what is it?” Dash asked, crouching beside Gray. He put a gentle hand on the dog’s shoulder. “Steady, boy.”

Gray whined and thumped his tail twice, then went back to snarling.

Darke looked up at the sky. “It’s time to end the game. Your pet knows ours is close.”

“The game. Your pet?” Scully stepped beside Dash, and her gun was in her hands. “Does your game result in dead bodies being left in the woods?”

“The Macabre residents?” Darke shook his head. “Those were accidents. It was looking for me. Harry was wearing one of my shirts. I think it smelled that. The woman must have panicked.”

There was a vibration in the air around them that made Langly grab his nose and try to pop his eardrums. Something barely audible was buzzing and humming like a million mosquitoes inside an air mattress.

“What the hell is that?”

Jeff’s pointing finger shook, Langly saw. The thing in question was coming from under the pines. No, oozing from under the pines, Langly corrected his initial incredulous impression. Gray made a strangled sound as he lunged at the thing and was brought up short by Dash’s grip on his collar.

Was that what Ursus spelaeus really looked like? Langly wondered. The huge, hairy lump swung its mammoth head between Darke and Gray and began to change.

“It’s one of them.” Scully said, her voice sounding calm and detached. “Some of them are shapeshifters.”

Looking at the oversized reflection of a Gray-like creature draw back its lips and show off canines the size of cucumbers, Langly wondered if he was going to throw up soon. He felt Frohike nudge him in the side, and heard faint exclamations from his friend, but couldn’t make sense from the words. The buzzing in his head was getting worse. The world was getting darker.

He was going to pass out, and he wasn't sure that was a bad thing. Langly saw Scully step forward, and tried to focus only on her. The effort seemed to work. The buzzing diminished to background static.

“That’s your pet?” Scully still held her gun on Darke.

“Yes.” Darke smiled and extended his hand. A mass of flesh, like a fingerless arm, sprouted from the creature’s side and enveloped Darke’s fingers and forearm. It rested there for a moment, then reabsorbed backward into the changing mass.

Part of Darke’s arm was missing. Langly swallowed and felt his stomach lurch. The thing on the ground was changing again, and the result was far from pretty.

“Shit. It looks like him.”

Frohike sounded thoroughly grossed out, and with reason, Langly thought, staring at the broad caricature of Darke squatting in the dirt. The thing was still on all fours, but its pseudo-human face was bobbing and grinning at them.

“The bites,” Scully said. “That’s where it gets the information that lets it mimic things.”

“First ancestor is very clever. And very naughty.”

Darke’s hand had returned to normal. Langly shuddered.

“It’s time to end the game. We never imagined I’d be the last seeker. I never imagined I’d find this place interesting. Enjoy my story,” Darke said, stepping toward the thing on the ground.

The light was blue-white, and replaced the noise with a silence that seemed to suck in all sound. For a moment Langly feared his heart had stopped. He felt his lips move, and saw Scully’s lips move, but even the buzzing noise was gone. Her head was tilted upward, toward the nova ball of blue light. Because his eyes followed hers, because his eyes were watching the bits of blue-white fluff that were ascending, against gravity, into the light, Langly almost missed the similar ascent of William Darke and a hill-sized lump of green and gray debris.

The disappearance of the soles of Darke’s feet, then the light, was accompanied by a concussive, silent shockwave. Langly felt his knees hit the ground, then his stomach. He closed his eyes and let his cheek rest on the dirt, hearing exclamations from his companions as far-off, unintelligible babble.

“Ringo.”

Someone was shaking him, and pushing at one of his eyeballs under his glasses with something slimy and wet.

“Dash?”

“You okay?”

Langly opened his eyes and sat up. Frohike and Dash stared back at him, slightly distorted through the smears on his glasses. Gray was laying on one of his legs, panting and grinning. Further off, Scully was helping Jeff pick up the scattered bags. Her face was white, Langly could see, and her mouth was thinned to a brown-red line that looked like a new scar.

“I’m okay.” Langly got to his feet and pushed past Frohike. “Scully.”

She turned to him almost blindly.

“You’re still here, with us.”

“Of course I am.” For a moment her face held together.

Langly stepped close to her, and put his hands on her shoulders. He saw her fragile composure shatter, and he pulled her against his chest, crazily wishing that between the two of them they could shoot and bludgeon and kick the crap out of the fear that had come to live with them.

Langly felt a fine tremor shake her. Her head rested briefly on his shoulder, she pushed away from him. When she met his eyes again, she was back in control.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re not.” Langly took a deep breath and spoke quickly and quietly, before he thought better of it. “I know, because I’m not.” He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to deny his words. “I have bad dreams, sometimes while I’m awake. I should be able to talk to Byers and Frohike -- but I can’t.”

“What do you want, Langly?”

He barely heard her words. “Maybe, just to talk, sometime.”

She nodded then started to turn away from him.

“One more thing.” Langly said.

“You’re not getting a date,” she said shortly. “Spit it out.”

“If you ever see my feet disappearing like that, put a bullet in me.” Langly saw her shake her head and felt oddly comforted by knowledge she’d shoot him, if she could.

“That was a ship. Space ship. Alien transport,” Frohike muttered to Dash.

“I think you’re right, Melvin. Shall we get the hell out of here?”

Jeff was already headed back toward the car. Langly followed Dash and Frohike, with Scully near his side.

They sat in the car, staring out of the windows in silence.

“I need a drink,” Jeff said, finally. “A lot of drinks.”

“After we go to Darke’s,” Scully said. She was sitting in the front seat next to Dash.

Little soldier, big soldier, Langly thought, looking at their profiles. “Search the joint, Scully?”

“I think he left something for us,” she said. “I’d like to find it before anyone else does.”


	9. Chapter 9

**(BITS - circa 1971)**

 _Let’s have a round for these freaks and these soldiers  
A round for these friends of mine … _

_Carey, Joni Mitchell_

 **Macabre, Michigan: Friday 9:30 p.m.**

She’d been reading to them for nearly an hour. The manuscript had been laser printed and neatly bound with a cover page that read: _First Ancestor’s Game_. Scully had found it immediately on the bare, empty desk in William Darke’s bare, empty house.

Darke hadn’t been much of a writer, but the story he had left behind was compelling enough to excuse his grammar and sentence structure.

It started with the Cultivators, sentient creatures originally from somewhere immeasurably distant from earth. It started when earth was still a steaming ball, when the first specks of life were attempting to form in primal fluids. It started when one of the Cultivators’ ships paused to give a cherished pet the chance for a romp and rest stop.

“More. Scotch.”

Jeff’s hand was limp and unsteady, but Langly leaned over and refilled his glass. Dash sat next to him on the couch, staring at the toes of his boots, and Frohike sprawled in the leather recliner with a glazed expression in his eyes and a three-quarters empty tequila bottle in his hand.

Scully had originally refused a drink, but after she finished reading she put the manuscript carefully in the middle of the coffee table, stood and took the scotch bottle from Langly’s hands.

She looked around for a glass. Langly handed his empty one to her.

“Thanks.” Scully poured three fingers into the glass, stared at the quarter inch left in the bottle, then added it to her drink.

“It wasn’t a bad story,” Dash said, finally. “Since there’s no reason to submit it to the magazine, I might use part of it in the next CyberMerc issue.”

Langly pushed his blurry glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and began to laugh as he saw Dash wink at Scully. His uncle was such a Langly.

“You all understand what Darke suggests happened here?” Scully made a face as she took a large swallow of scotch. “What that thing was, what we are?”

Jeff’s head had lolled back against Dash. He was gone, Langly realized, unconscious. The whole thing had been more then he could accept.

“It was a pet. It was -- a monkey,” Dash said. “First Ancestor. Darke implies it was the last of its kind, a remnant of life from where the Cultivators evolved. Able to hibernate, regenerate, transform itself. It was a thing so ancient it would sound absurd to give it an age.”

“And one nice day, when the earth was forming, a passing space ship stopped to let their nice doggy stretch its legs,” Frohike continued. “The doggy liked being out of the spaceship so much that it decided not to come back when it was called.”

“While it played, some of its genetic material got added to the mix of stuff that earth was turning into first life,” Scully said. She finished her scotch. “Although its behavior irritated the Cultivators, their missing pet had inadvertently provided them with a new source of organic hosts for their own reproduction. After all, the primitive animals that eventually filled their pet’s playground shared genetic material with them.”

“It’d make a great tv series,” Frohike said. “Do you believe any of it?”

Her eyes were wide and unfocused as she stared past them. “I believe there are forms of life we know very little about. I believe I saw something in the woods today that I don’t have the vocabulary to explain.” She paused, and met Langly’s eyes. “I believe it is the greatest blessing to have good friends.”

The heat in his blood wasn’t all coming from the scotch, Langly realized, with an embarrassed nod that acknowledged her words.

“I’m going to bed.” Scully left the room quickly.

They stared at the manuscript, at the innocuous rectangle of white paper that contained such fantastical, heretical, incredible information.

Dash moved to let Jeff slump onto the couch. He stretched and yawned

“It’s early. Want to go for a walk, Melvin?”

“I’d like that.” Frohike seemed to flow, bonelessly, out of the chair. He wobbled and steadied himself against the back of the recliner. “Food would be good.”

“We’ll take Gray home. Chris will make us scrambled eggs.” Dash waited by the door. “Ringo?”

“I’m going to talk to Byers. I’ll find something to eat in the kitchen.” They were talking about such mundane things, Langly realized, trying to ease the weirdness away from the comfortable, normal world. He followed Dash and Frohike into the hall, where Gray waited sprawled on the rug.

The thought came without warning as he watched them prepare to leave, and Langly felt his chest convulse with giggles and his eyes tear as the full import of the idea tickled his helpless mind.

“You okay?” Dash stepped to put a hand on his shoulder, and Langly could see the worry in his uncle’s eyes.

“Fine. I’m fine,” he managed to choke out. He yanked up his t-shirt and wiped his face, struggling for composure. “What’s the moral of the story . . . children friends?” he managed to gasp.

“Langly.” Frohike seemed to be sobering up. “You’re not okay. You’re hysterical.”

“Moral of the story?” Dash frowned. “What is it, boy?”

Langly bit his tongue. He held his breath until blue pinwheels danced in front of his eyes, then slowly, slowly he took in a deep lungful of air.

“I’m surprised Darke didn’t end the story with it,” Langly said, wiping away another laughter tear. “It’s so obvious.”

“What?” Dash and Frohike demanded, in unison.

Langly grinned, wishing Scully hadn’t left before the thought had occurred to him.

“Don’t pee in the gene pool,” he said.

 

 **Washington, D.C.: Four weeks later**

“I’m the one who’s supposed to get brown envelopes in the mail,” Mulder complained, waving a generic looking package under her nose.

“Stop it.” Scully glared at him. Mulder was such an adolescent sometimes. “If that’s my mail, give it to me.”

“It feels like a magazine.”

She snatched it from him and examined the hand-lettered envelope. There was no return address. The letter opener was missing, and she took a moment to glare at Mulder, who grinned back.

“Quit misplacing the office supplies.” She ran her nail along the envelope flap.

The comic slid out into her hands, a beacon of glowing, vibrant color with bold lettering. Scully looked at the cover, realizing, too late, that she should have hidden it from Mulder immediately.

“Wow! That’s you, Scully!” Mulder leaned over her shoulder, his tongue resting on his bottom lip, making an unattractive slobbering noise. “Nice pair of Clevelands. Just how well did you get to know Langly’s uncle?”

“Shut up, Mulder.” She jammed the comic back into the envelope, and pushed away from her desk. “I’m going to find some lunch. While I’m gone, get a life."

She walked to the elevator, rapidly, and stepped into the empty box. As the door closed, she slid the comic out of its wrapper.

The woman on the cover was taller then Scully was, her bare legs undoubtedly longer, her elegant neck more swan-like, her cleavage more -- but yes, Scully could see the red-haired space siren’s features bore more than a small resemblance to the sketch Dash had done of her in the studio.

 _CyberMerc: We Come in Peace._ Scully laughed unwillingly as her fingers trailed over the words below the title letters. _Introducing intergalactic agent Rocket Malloy._

The elevator toned, paused, and the door opened to admit one of the young field agents. Scully tried to remember his name. Was it Harrison, or Heinlein?

“Wow!” He gaped at the comic. “You’ve got a new Joe Cool! I haven’t seen one of those things in a couple of years! I thought maybe he was dead!”

Scully slipped the comic back into the envelope before the young agent could get a closer look at the cover. “He’s not dead,” she said, smiling. “Joe Cool’s alive and well in Macabre.”


End file.
